How to Write Like a Writer
A Sharp and Subversive Guide to Ignoring Inhibitions, Inviting Inspiration, and Finding Your True Voice
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- €9.99
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- €9.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling author of the beloved classic How to Read Literature Like a Professor teaches you how to write everything from a report for your community association to a meaningful memoir in this masterful and engaging guide.
Combing anecdotes and hard-won lessons from decades of teaching and writing—and invoking everyone from Hemingway to your third-grade teacher—retired professor Thomas C. Foster guides you through the basics of writing. With How to Write Like a Writer you’ll learn how to organize your thoughts, construct first drafts, and (not incidentally) keep you in your chair so that inspiration can come to visit.
With warmth and wit, Foster shows you how to get into (and over) your best self, how to find your voice, and how to know when, if ever, a piece of work is done.
Packed with enlightening anecdotes, highlighted with lists and bullet points, this invaluable guide reveals how writers work their magic, and reminds us that we all—for better or worse, whether we mean to or not—are known by what we put on paper or screen, both our thoughts and our words.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Foster (How to Read Literature Like a Professor), an English professor at the University of Michigan, Flint, offers in this friendly guide practical advice on developing a voice and writing "like you mean it." The bulk of his instructions come on the topic of building confidence, for which he provides numberous exercises—one can get in touch with their "intellectual/emotional response system" by writing a fake review, and writing about "a complex painting in massive detail" can sharpen one's description chops. Foster insists that the key to writing is "having something to say" and "knowing what that something is," and gives a rousing "pep talk" about how to get started writing, which, he claims, is the hardest part. He urges writers to "burn your thesaurus" and frequently references the works of Ernest Hemingway, John McPhee, and Joan Didion as examples of sentence structure and voice. Though his personal examples feel a little self-indulgent and unnecessary (ironic, given that he warns against the dangers of using the first person), he's solid on classroom tips and tricks, as in his point-by-point list of what makes a good thesis. Students will appreciate these handy notes.
