Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual

(Paperback)

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Description

From the best-selling author ofRubyfruit Jungle andBingo, here is a writers' manual as provocative,frank, and funny as her fiction. Unlike mostwriters' guides, this one had as much to do with howwriters live as with mastering the tools of theirtrade. Rita Mae Brown begins with a very personalaccount of her own career, from her days as a youngpoet who had written a novel no publisher wantedto take a chance on, right up to her recentadventures as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a sassy stylethat makes her outspoken advice as entertaining asit is useful, she provides straight talk aboutpaying the rent while maintaining the energy towrite; and dealing with agents, publishers, critics,and the publicity circus; about pursuingjournalisim, academia, or screen-writing; and about rejectingthe Hemingway myth of the hard-living,hard-drinking genius. In addition Brown, a former teacher orwriting, offers a serious examination of thewriter's tool--language, plotting, characters,symbolism--plus exercises to sharpen the ear for dialogue,and a fascinating, annoted reading list ofimportant works from the seventh century to the latetwentieth.

Reviews

"Funny enough inplaces to make you laugh aloud but honest enough toweed out the weak of heart who think writing is madeby muses rather than writers' hardwork."--Columbus Sunday Dispatch

"A writer's manual that reads like a crossbetween Writers Digest and AllanBloom's The Closing of the AmericanMind."--The WashingtonPost.

Author Bio

Rita Mae Brownis the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series;A Nose for JusticeandMurder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day;andSix of One,as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia.