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Title: The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series)
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| The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series) by Wiley Understanding intimately how things work. | A clown for Ringling Brothers, an assistant in liver and heart transplantation surgeries, a baseball umpire, a motorcyclist and a participant in psychotherapy: When it comes to having the experience necessary to write interesting essays, Lee Gutkind is ahead of the game. In his textbook "The Art of Creative Nonfiction : Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality," Gutkind uses his passion for the written word and the experiences that inspire it to assist beginning creative nonfiction writers in their quest to share life through writing.
Covered in the book's outline-reminiscent chapters are instructions on interviewing, fact checking, finding ideas, creating dialogue and keeping story files. Straying from the norm of "interesting... [and] accurate," Gutkind stresses that the most important requirement of a creative nonfiction writer is passion- "A passion for the written word, a passion for the search and discovery of knowledge, and a passion for... understand[ing] intimately how things in this world work." In the following chapters, he offers advice on what creative nonfiction is (the relation experiences, often subjective) and is not (encyclopedia truth) in a concise yet affable manner.
Peppered with brief works from other writers used as illustrations of his suggestions, "The Art of Creative Nonfiction" is a solid, friendly text for beginning writers and an excellent stepping stone into the world of writing for a career. | | The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series) by Wiley Shallow | | This book reads like an outline of a book on Creative Nonfiction. A beginner might find some chapters useful or inspiring, but anyone with writing experience is likely to find it too shallow. The chapter on Immersion--one of the key methods of reporting a highly detailed, creative story--is only 8 pages long, gives a few anecdotes, but provides next to no useful information to a writer contemplating this technique. The following chapter, on interviewing, is 10 pages long and more than half of it is composed of long excerpts from other stories. You might see the _results_ of doing a good interview, but not much beyond the obvious in actually carrying out a good interview. This book doesn't stand out for me among the large number of mediocre books aimed at beginning to intermediate nonfiction writers. | | The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series) by Wiley Confidence Building Tool for every aspiring writer | | Initially I was afraid to invest hard cash on this book because I want my nonfiction to be totally factual. However, my fears were unfounded. This book was well worth the investment and I recommend it to all aspiring writers of nonfiction. The book is a tremendous eye-opener. It blows the myth that nonfiction writing has to be dull. Dull does not sell. If you are writing nonfiction, you need to read this book. For one thing, the author teaches that the words "creative" and "fiction" are not synonymous. You CAN write creative nonfiction. | | The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series) by Wiley Essential Reading for All Nonfiction Writers | | How often has a piece of nonfiction writing left you bored to tears with its rambling of fact after fact, a completely limp, motionless piece? Well, Gutkind has developed a structured teaching method for this genre: frame, focus and scene. Once you understand his "yellow test," your writing will vastly improve, bursting with energy and radiating the essence of life, that is, the truth with a capital "T." He lifts your head, redirecting you from gazing into your own belly button, and unveils the techniques of capturing and presenting universal themes--a focus that touches us all. This book not only shows you how to write, more importantly, it show you how to think. Buy it today--he's the godfather of the genre, creative nonfiction, and the editor and founder of the only journal devoted exclusively to the genre. | | The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series) by Wiley Loved It | | Great book. Makes me want to quit my day job and become a writer. I enjoyed the book thoroughly. | | The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series) by Wiley Product Description | | A complete guide to the art and craft of creative nonfiction—from one of its pioneer practitioners The challenge of creative nonfiction is to write the truth in a style that is as accurate and informative as reportage, yet as personal, provocative, and dramatic as fiction. In this one-of-a-kind guide, award-winning author, essayist, teacher, and editor Lee Gutkind gives you concise, pointed advice on every aspect of writing and selling your work, including: - Guidelines for choosing provocative—and salable—topics
- Smart research techniques—including advice on conducting penetrating interviews and using electronic research tools
- Tips for focusing and structuring a piece for maximum effectiveness
- Advice on working successfully with editors and literary agents
| | The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality (Wiley Books for Writers Series) by Wiley Amazon.com | | This book is for the beginning creative nonfiction writer--one who needs to be told that writers are an eccentric lot; one who has never heard of the Yaddo artists' colony. Still, Lee Gutkind, the author of several books of creative nonfiction and the founder/editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction, has some interesting things to tell us about this genre of writing, which strives to communicate real-life stories dramatically. The most important quality that a creative nonfiction writer can have, writes Gutkind, is passion: "A passion for the written word; a passion for the search and discovery of knowledge; and a passion for ... understand[ing] intimately how things in this world work." Gutkind offers instruction on finding story ideas, focusing one's work, keeping story files, fact checking, and interviewing; he tells us what to expect from editors and agents; and he teaches us how to know when we're ready to start writing (when you can "think of nothing more to ask or to learn"). Perhaps the best tidbit here is Gutkind's emphasis on delving deeply into one's subject matter without inserting oneself into the situation. "While immersing myself in a writing project," he says, "I routinely like to compare myself to a rather undistinguished and utilitarian end table in a living room or office. It is a fixture. You walk in and out of your living room dozens of times a day. You see the table, you expect to see the table, but you do not say, 'Well, there is the table, hello table.'" Appendices include a sample book proposal and readings. |
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