Download or read book Thanks But This Isn t for Us written by Jessica Page Morrell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-08-20 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun, practical guide that reveals the essentials of good fiction and memoir writing by exposing the most common mistakes literary writers make. All great works of fiction and memoir are unique-but most bad novels, stories, and memoirs have a lot in common. From clunky dialogue to poorly sketchedout characters, sagging pacing to exaggerated prose, these beginners' mistakes drive any agent or editor to their stock rejection letter, telling the aspiring writer "Thanks, but this isn't for us," and leaving many to wonder what exactly it is that they're doing wrong. Veteran writing coach, developmental editor, and writing instructor Jessica Page Morrell will fill in the gaps in every rejection letter you've ever received. In Thanks, But This Isn't for Us, Morrell uses her years of experience to isolate the specific errors beginners make, including the pitfalls of unrealistic dialogue, failing to "show, not tell," and over-the-top plot twists. These are just a few of the problems that keep writers from breaking through with their work. Sympathetic and humane, but pulling no punches, Thanks, But This Isn't for Us shows writers precisely where they've gone wrong and how to get on the right track. In sixteen to-the-point chapters, with checklists, exercises, takeaway tips, and a glossary, Morrell helps readers transcend these mistakes so that they don't have to learn the hard way: with another rejection letter.
Download or read book Thanks for the Feedback written by Douglas Stone and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coauthors of the New York Times–bestselling Difficult Conversations take on the toughest topic of all: how we see ourselves Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen have spent the past fifteen years working with corporations, nonprofits, governments, and families to determine what helps us learn and what gets in our way. In Thanks for the Feedback, they explain why receiving feedback is so crucial yet so challenging, offering a simple framework and powerful tools to help us take on life’s blizzard of offhand comments, annual evaluations, and unsolicited input with curiosity and grace. They blend the latest insights from neuroscience and psychology with practical, hard-headed advice. Thanks for the Feedback is destined to become a classic in the fields of leadership, organizational behavior, and education.
Download or read book Why We Write written by Meredith Maran and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty of America's bestselling authors share tricks, tips, and secrets of the successful writing life. Anyone who's ever sat down to write a novel or even a story knows how exhilarating and heartbreaking writing can be. So what makes writers stick with it? In Why We Write, twenty well-known authors candidly share what keeps them going and what they love most—and least—about their vocation. Contributing authors include: Isabel Allende David Baldacci Jennifer Egan James Frey Sue Grafton Sara Gruen Kathryn Harrison Gish Jen Sebastian Junger Mary Karr Michael Lewis Armistead Maupin Terry McMillan Rick Moody Walter Mosley Susan Orlean Ann Patchett Jodi Picoult Jane Smiley Meg Wolitzer
Download or read book Thanks But This Isn t for Us written by Jessica Page Morrell and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2009-08-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun, practical guide that reveals the essentials of good fiction and memoir writing by exposing the most common mistakes literary writers make. All great works of fiction and memoir are unique-but most bad novels, stories, and memoirs have a lot in common. From clunky dialogue to poorly sketchedout characters, sagging pacing to exaggerated prose, these beginners' mistakes drive any agent or editor to their stock rejection letter, telling the aspiring writer "Thanks, but this isn't for us," and leaving many to wonder what exactly it is that they're doing wrong. Veteran writing coach, developmental editor, and writing instructor Jessica Page Morrell will fill in the gaps in every rejection letter you've ever received. In Thanks, But This Isn't for Us, Morrell uses her years of experience to isolate the specific errors beginners make, including the pitfalls of unrealistic dialogue, failing to "show, not tell," and over-the-top plot twists. These are just a few of the problems that keep writers from breaking through with their work. Sympathetic and humane, but pulling no punches, Thanks, But This Isn't for Us shows writers precisely where they've gone wrong and how to get on the right track. In sixteen to-the-point chapters, with checklists, exercises, takeaway tips, and a glossary, Morrell helps readers transcend these mistakes so that they don't have to learn the hard way: with another rejection letter.
Download or read book The Way of the Writer written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Charles Johnson—a National Book Award winner, Professor Emeritus at University of Washington, and one of America’s preeminent scholars on literature and race—comes an instructive, inspiring guide to the craft and art of writing. An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor, and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has devoted his life to creative pursuit. His 1990 National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage is a modern classic, revered as much for its daring plot as its philosophical underpinnings. For thirty-three years, Johnson taught and mentored students in the art and craft of creative writing. The Way of the Writer is his record of those years, and the coda to a kaleidoscopic, boundary-shattering career. Organized into six accessible, easy-to-navigate sections, The Way of the Writer is both a literary reflection on the creative impulse and a utilitarian guide to the writing process. Johnson shares his lessons and exercises from the classroom, starting with word choice, sentence structure, and narrative voice, and delving into the mechanics of scene, dialogue, plot and storytelling before exploring the larger questions at stake for the serious writer. What separates literature from industrial fiction? What lies at the heart of the creative impulse? How does one navigate the literary world? And how are philosophy and fiction concomitant? Luminous, inspiring, and imminently accessible, The Way of the Writer is a revelatory glimpse into the mind of the writer and an essential guide for anyone with a story to tell.
Download or read book Last Lecture written by Perfection Learning Corporation and published by Turtleback. This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thank You for Being Late written by Thomas L. Friedman and published by Picador USA. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Version 2.0 with a new afterword"--Cover.
Download or read book Thank You Lord For Everything written by P J Lyons and published by Zonderkidz. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love surrounds you, beauty, too. Notice how God blesses you! Clap your hands, shout and sing: Thank you, Lord, for everything. A comfortable and relaxing rhyme tells the story of God’s great blessings in this sweet book. P.J. Lyons’ engaging text and Tim Warnes’ playful illustrations remind readers how much they have to be thankful for.
Download or read book An Awesome Book of Thanks written by Dallas Clayton and published by Two Lions. This book was released on 2010-11-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Double Tap to Zoom. Inspired by the idea of being thankful for all that you have, An Awesome Book of Thanks is a beautifully written, fantastically illustrated walk through a world of magical unicorns, robotic dinosaurs, and all of life's simple moments, great and small. Crafted for children ages 0-1000, this timeless story is sure to be an instant classic, at home in the hands of anyone looking for the perfect reminder of just how beautiful life can be.
Download or read book Mary Engelbreit s Little Book of Thanks written by Mary Engelbreit and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling creator Mary Engelbreit delivers a festive, giftable Thanksgiving-themed book filled with quotes about being thankful. No matter the season or the reason, a simple expression of thanks is always welcome. In this joyful collection of quotes about gratitude and blessings, readers will delight in the special moments in life that bring a smile to our faces. Each quote, from distinguished writers like Walt Whitman and Maya Angelou, is paired with autumnal art from New York Times bestselling author-illustrator Mary Engelbreit, making this little book of thanks a big book of happy! Express your thanks to a teacher, a helpful neighbor, a grandparent or parent, or anyone else special in your life with Mary Engelbreit's Little Book of Thanks.
Download or read book Captivate Your Readers written by Jodie Renner and published by Cobalt Books. This book was released on 2015-02-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you looking for concrete, effective ways to bring your fiction to life for readers, so they feel they’re right there with the characters? And they stay up until the wee hours eagerly turning the pages? Then this book is for you. Today’s readers want to put aside their cares and chores and lose themselves in an absorbing story. This book shows you how to provide the emotional involvement and immediacy readers crave in fiction. This third editor’s guide to writing compelling fiction by multi-award-winning author Jodie Renner provides specific advice, with examples, for hooking readers on page one and immersing them in your story world. And like Renner’s other guides, it’s presented in a concise, reader-friendly format for busy writers, and you can pick and choose among the topics to suit your current questions and needs. It’s all about engaging readers through techniques such as using deep point of view, showing instead of telling, avoiding author intrusions, creating dialogue that’s real and riveting, and basically stepping back as the author and letting the characters tell the story.
Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Download or read book Maid for Me written by Kathleen Lieu and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chances are, a hobo would moon me on the train before a hot guy asks me out-- I'm plain, a little chubby and definitely not hot stuff like the socialites of Gossipy Girl or what-not. But hey, guess what, the Prince of Uptown, Jaiden Daniels, just singled me out among dozens of other girls and he's hired me to become his maid/bodyguard and pretend girlfriend. He wants me to pretend to be his love interest so his parents would stop matchmaking him with socialite airheads and a crazy Princess. Acting to be in love with Jaiden is hard, even though he's gorgeous, because I've been in love with my best friend Kiterin since forever. Too bad Kiterin has a gorgeous girlfriend. So here I am, ordinary-girl Mina Lin, star of a real teenage soap-opera involving love polygons (I love Kit, Kit doesn't love me, Jaiden's falling for me?), evil socialites, backstabbing, twists and turns-wait until you hear what happens when Jaiden's kidnapped. It's Mina Lin with her Mina-jitsu (a martial arts style I've perfected) to the rescue! Find out what happens in my story, Maid for Me by Kat Lieu.
Download or read book Thank You for Your Service written by David Finkel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a Major Motion Picture Directed by American Sniper Writer Jason Hall and Starring Miles Teller No journalist has reckoned with the psychology of war as intimately as David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel embedded with the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they carried out the infamous “surge”. Now, in Thank You for Your Service, Finkel tells the true story of those men as they return home from the front-lines of Baghdad and struggle to reintegrate--both into their family lives and into American society at large. Finkel is with these veterans in their most intimate, painful, and hopeful moments as they try to recover, and in doing so, he creates an indelible, essential portrait of what life after war is like--not just for these soldiers, but for their wives, widows, children, and friends, and for the professionals who are truly trying, and to a great degree failing, to undo the damage that has been done. Thank You for Your Service is an act of understanding, and it offers a more complete picture than we have ever had of two essential questions: When we ask young men and women to go to war, what are we asking of them? And when they return, what are we thanking them for? “Finkel sketches a panoramic view of postwar life....A book that every American should read.” —Jake Tapper, Los Angeles Times Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. One of Ten Favorite Books of 2013 by Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times), a Washington Post Top Ten Book of the Year, and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
Download or read book These Precious Days written by Ann Patchett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
Download or read book Thanks A Thousand written by A. J. Jacobs and published by Simon & Schuster/ TED. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea was deceptively simple: New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jacobs decided to thank every single person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee. The resulting journey takes him across the globe, transforms his life, and reveals secrets about how gratitude can make us all happier, more generous, and more connected. Author A.J. Jacobs discovers that his coffee—and every other item in our lives—would not be possible without hundreds of people we usually take for granted: farmers, chemists, artists, presidents, truckers, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers, and goatherds. By thanking these people face to face, Jacobs finds some much-needed brightness in his life. Gratitude does not come naturally to Jacobs—his disposition is more Larry David than Tom Hanks—but he sets off on the journey on a dare from his son. And by the end, it’s clear to him that scientific research on gratitude is true. Gratitude’s benefits are legion: It improves compassion, heals your body, and helps battle depression. Jacobs gleans wisdom from vivid characters all over the globe, including the Minnesota miners who extract the iron that makes the steel used in coffee roasters, to the Madison Avenue marketers who captured his wandering attention for a moment, to the farmers in Colombia. Along the way, Jacobs provides wonderful insights and useful tips, from how to focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of the few that go wrong. And how our culture overemphasizes the individual over the team. And how to practice the art of “savoring meditation” and fall asleep at night. Thanks a Thousand is a reminder of the amazing interconnectedness of our world. It shows us how much we take for granted. It teaches us how gratitude can make our lives happier, kinder, and more impactful. And it will inspire us to follow our own “Gratitude Trails.”
Download or read book Long and Hard written by Raul Roqué and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometimes, a dead man can accomplish much. The case of a young murdered scientist leads Rickie Ciprian to a secretive laboratory in downtown Miami where research activities are kept from the public eye. Investigating the murder, Rickie prowls Miamis backstreets where legal and illegal activities hide true intentions, and where an investigator asking questions can become an easy target. International wealth brings Rickies adversaries to the surface where the murder, the clandestine laboratory, and ruthless power collide with cold-blooded terrorists. Rickie has only moments to solve the case and keep millions of innocent people along Floridas gold coast alive!
