How do you write a novel?Practising novelists and teachers of creative writing reveal their working methods and offer practical advice. Subjects covered range from magic realism to characterisation, surrealism to historical fiction, via perspective, plot twists and avoiding being boring, among many others.This book is forcreative writing studentswriters and readers of novelsteachers of creative writingWith co...

WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM PRIZE'Funny, sad, bewildering and painfully honest, it’s a must-read for all fans of Joe Dunthorne’s Submarine' Emerald StreetJim Thorne.He wants to understand love.His mum.Her three sisters have epic perms.And they’re famous.His dad.He is focused on a vital question:Mario or Sonic?It’s England, ...

Life in Manchester is sexy and stinking. Hold your breath. Justin wants a sex life, not a sex death. Rebecca has breasts but doesn't understand them. She needs to talk to Dostoevsky about erections, hairy armpits and firing squads. Life is difficult. Steve wants cash so he can enjoy his trendy body. He wants Carly too, but she just wants a never-ending orgasm. Johnny wants to be touched and, if possible, he'd like to seem happy. Colin wants to know why tits make his fists clench.Th...

Are you ready to come together?Are you tired of typing out your interests and hyping up the details of your everyday life? Imagine then a social network that touches and loves, sweats and farts. Imagine romance in real time. Imagine humans licking rather than double clicking each other. Imagine the Wild World. Are you ready to come together?Lonely, horny and young, Janek, Anka, Roger and Joe find themselves being dragged out of their isolat...

The author of The End of Absence shares a "gorgeously written and fascinating" inquiry into the transformative power of being alone (Michael Finkel, New York Times best-selling author of True Story).The capacity to be alone, properly alone, is one of life's subtlest skills. Real solitude is a crucial ingredient for a rich interior life. It inspires reflection, allows creativity to flourish, and improves our relationships with ourselves and...

The follow-up and companion volume to the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor—a lively and entertaining guide to understanding and dissecting novels to make everyday reading more enriching, satisfying, and funOf all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and...

Join Ursula K. Le Guin as she explores a broad array of subjects, ranging from Tolstoy, Twain, and Tolkien to women's shoes, beauty, and family life. With her customary wit, intelligence, and literary craftsmanship, she offers a diverse and highly engaging set of readings. The Wave in the Mind includes some of Le Guin's finest literary criticism, rare autobiographical writings, performance art pieces, and, most centrally, her reflections on the arts of writing and reading.

Written by one of the country's leading experts on the short story, Write Short Stories - And Get Them Published is ideal if you want to write creatively in a genre that is increasingly attracting attention from publishers, and which offers plenty of competition and festival opportunities for you to showcase your work.It will help unlock your imagination and creativity, and to discover stories you didn't know you had. It will help you to observe the world around you more sharply, a...

In the wee hours of the night, when inspiration strikes unexpectedly, don't let it slip away.If you write, you know what it's like. Insight and creativity—the desire to push the boundaries of your writing—strike when you least expect it. And you're often in no position to act: in the shower, driving the kids to school...in the middle of the night.The 3 A.M. Epiphany offers more than 200 intriguing writing exercises designed to help you think, write...

Master the Power of StoryWhen you consider the thousands of years of storytelling that comprise our literary tradition, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the shadow of so many works. But there are common threads that link all stories--from Beowulf and Hamlet to Gone With the Wind and The Godfather to the story you're drafting right now in your head. These threads form the foundation that supports story--a foundation Nancy Lamb sho...

'Excellent … This slim volume cannot fail as a pick-me-up' Observer_______________________Comprising fifty-two short pieces, Letters to a Young Writer is a direct address to the artistic, professional, and philosophical concerns that can challenge and torment an author.Ranging from practical matters of authorship – such as finding an agent, the pros and cons of creative writing degrees and handling bad rev...

Why do authors write? How do they go about it? What is good writing?In On Writing, Robert McCrum collects together his questions and reflections on the nature of writing from his Observer newspaper column. In them he explores the sometimes tricky relationship between writing and commerce, looks at the state of modern literature, and asks where great writing really comes from can it be taught, or is it borne out of author experience?A unique and informed view on writing and how it is affected...