Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual

Title: Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual
Author: Rita Mae Brown
ISBN: 9780553346305
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1989
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Edition: Reissue
Number of Pages: 272
Condition Note: Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description: "A writer's manual that reads like a cross between "Writers Digest" and Allan Bloom's "The Closing Of The American Mind.""-- "The Washington Post."

From the best-selling author of "Rubyfruit Jungle" and "Bingo," here is a writers' manual as provocative, frank, and funny as her fiction. Unlike most writers' guides, this one had as much to do with how writers live as with mastering the tools of their trade. Rita Mae Brown begins with a very personal account of her own career, from her days as a young poet who had written a novel no publisher wanted to take a chance on, right up to her recent adventures as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a sassy style that makes her outspoken advice as entertaining as it is useful, she provides straight talk about paying the rent while maintaining the energy to write; and dealing with agents, publishers, critics, and the publicity circus; about pursuingj ournalisim, academia, or screen-writing; and about rejecting the Hemingway myth of the hard-living, hard-drinking genius. In addition Brown, a former teacher or writing, offers a serious examination of the writer's tool--language, plotting, characters, symbolism--plus exercises to sharpen the ear for dialogue, and a fascinating, annoted reading list of important works from the seventh century to the late twentieth.

"Funny enough in places to make you laugh aloud but honest enough to weed out the weak of heart who think writing is made by muses rather than writers' hard work."-- "Columbus Sunday Dispatch"