John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspiring Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech Today is the 110th birthday of writer John Steinbeck, whose great novel of the 1930s, The Grapes of Wrath, gives an eloquent and sympathetic voice to the dispossessed. In 1962, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." You can watch him deliver his Nobel speech above. And for insights into how Steinbeck reached that pinnacle, you can read a collection of his observations on the art of fiction from the Fall, 1975 edition of The Paris Review, including six writing tips jotted down in a letter to a friend the same year he won the Nobel Prize. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. "As you write," Steinbeck says, "trust the disconnections and the gaps. Related content: Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell Remembering Ernest Hemingway, Fifty Years After His Death
ITI's LiteraryMarketPlace.com ™ Copyright © 2014 Information Today, Inc. All rights reserved. Literary Market Place™ and literarymarketplace.com™ are trademarks of Information Today, Inc. View Information Today, Inc.'s or LiteraryMarketPlace.com's terms of use. Seven Tips From Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction Image by Lloyd Arnold via Wikimedia Commons Before he was a big game hunter, before he was a deep-sea fisherman, Ernest Hemingway was a craftsman who would rise very early in the morning and write. His best stories are masterpieces of the modern era, and his prose style is one of the most influential of the 20th century. Hemingway never wrote a treatise on the art of writing fiction. 1: To get started, write one true sentence. Hemingway had a simple trick for overcoming writer's block. Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. 2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next. There is a difference between stopping and foundering. The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. 3: Never think about the story when you're not working. 7: Be Brief.
Amazon aren't destroying publishing, they're reshaping it The debate about Amazon v the publishing industry is getting so heated and so polarised that quite soon it's going to need its own version of Godwin's law. The passion is almost religious. On the one hand, you have those who say Amazon is a kind of new publishing messiah, casting out the old gatekeepers and ushering in a democratised, consumer-centric book trade. Amazon makes money differently from a conventional publisher. It's perfectly true that Amazon's approach is, for the moment, mostly cheaper for the consumer than the now-endangered agency model favoured by publishers. Before agency was introduced, Amazon boasted of controlling 90% of the ebook market. And why is competition important? Digitisation was supposed to lead to a great democratisation of access to creative work. So Amazon, Google and Apple are gatekeepers. Amazon is a corporation, not a philanthropic trust dedicated to the production of works of art and literature. Traditional publishing is far from blameless.
PageFour - Novel Writing Software - Software for Creative Writers 4 Simple Ways to Create a Well-Written Ebook You’ve got a great idea. You’re going to write an ebook – perhaps your first! It’ll grow your business, bring in money, and help establish your expertise. And to keep yourself accountable, you tell all your readers to expect the ebook by the end of the month. Sure, that might mean a few caffeine-fuelled, late-night sessions … but your ebook will be done, dusted, and out the door. Heck, if you really knuckle down, perhaps you can knock out a short ebook in a single week. Maybe you can. But that doesn’t mean you should. Writing an Ebook isn’t a Race It’s easy to feel pressured to knock this out fast. But writing your ebook isn’t a race. Yes, at some point, you need to ship it out. Your Ebook Should be Your Best Work Whether your ebook is a paid product or a freebie, it needs to show you at your best. If customers need to pay for it, they’ll expect an ebook that’s complete, carefully structured, and well-written. And if your ebook is a freebie, you still need to make it as good as you can.
How To Bullshit Your Way Through Any Essay If there is one thing college kids neglect the most, besides basic diet and hygiene, it’s the homework assignment essay. Hastily written and utterly unedited the night before it’s due, the modern essay has become something of a nightmare for lackadaisical college students. But writing an essay that seems like it was written by someone with more than a double-digit IQ is not nearly as difficult as it seems, I assure you. Even the laziest Guitar Hero II god can whiz through an essay that reads like it was written by F. 1)The introductory paragraph. 2)The thesis. 3)Topic sentences. 4)In-text quotes and citations. 5)The conclusion. Slap some page numbers on that bitch and load a bowl—your essay is done. How to get your book reviewed – by avoiding book reviewers. To have a chance at selling your book on amazon or online, you need reviews. Lots of them. And if you’re like me, you hate pushing all your friends and family to review your work (is it really fair to ask them?) 1) Search online for book reviews, indie book reviewers, self-published book reviews, how to get book reviews, etc. 2) Email or contact those reviewers asking them to take a look at their books and comment. Here’s why that doesn’t work. Here’s a better way to get reviews – while avoiding “book review websites”. 1) Find bloggers (or websites, but blogs are easier) who are in some way related to your book, or who may like your book, or who have reviewed other books in a similar genre, with a Page Rank of three or more. Why PR3? 2) How to ask for the review: Tell them who you are, that you’re looking for creative ways to promote your book, and ask politely if they’d be interested in receiving a free copy. Dear _____, I found your site searching for blogs about _____.
Book-A-Minute Classics Got another book report to do? English teachers have the inconsiderate habit of assigning mammoth-sized works of literature to read and then actually expecting you to do it. This wouldn't be so bad except that invariably the requisite reading is as boring as fly fishing in an empty lake. "That's nice," you say, "but I don't believe you." Latest additions: 4/6/12 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. And, on Book-A-Minute SF/F... If you liked Book-A-Minute Classics, try our other Book-A-Minute pages: And try our companion site: RinkWorks Book-A-Minute Classics is a RinkWorks production. Talk Back Talk to us! Legalese Titles and trademarks are the property of their owners.
Coco Chanel, Jane Austen and Anita Brookner: On Flying Solo And Free - The Huffington Post I saw "Coco Avant Chanel" in Paris last spring, because I wanted to see a French film and "Coco" (somewhat to my dismay) was the only French movie playing in the two multi-screen cinemas around the Carrefour de l'Odéon, the rest of them being American horror shows with subtitles, or otherwise from elsewhere. Normally I have next to no interest in either Chanel herself or in the more recondite subtleties of women's couture -- no! what I mean to say is that I am happy to observe women looking beautiful in their clothes but I don't really want to know how they do that. Still, advance publicity, where Audrey Tatou exuded a darkly smoldering something or other, had caught my eye; moreover it was raining outdoors.... Let us suppose that Tatou's character is strictly fictional; never mind how strong her rapport may be with the historical Chanel. Our Coco will have none of this. That line finishes the scene by the window, but by then Coco has already stated her case.
Tension Hook Your Readers With Tension By Laura Backes, Write4Kids.com Tension. Without it, life would be—let's face it—boring. So would fiction. Tension works with conflict to raise the emotional level of the text to a boiling point. It forces the reader to become invested in the story. "Tension" is a loaded word, and can be misleading. Tension is what hooks readers of any age and keeps them turning the pages. * The ticking clock. * Dialogue. * Pacing. * Sentence structure. Each story requires a different kind of tension. Laura Backes is the author of Best Books for Kids Who (Think They) Hate to Read from Prima/Random House. Copyright © 2002, Children's Book Insider, LLC