Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings

Front Cover
Linda Anderson
Taylor & Francis, 2006 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 664 pages

Creative Writing is a complete writing course that will jump-start your writing and guide you through your first steps towards publication.

Suitable for use by students, tutors, writers' groups or writers working alone, this book offers:

  • a practical and inspiring section on the creative process, showing you how to stimulate your creativity and use your memory and experience in inventive ways
  • in-depth coverage of the most popular forms of writing, in extended sections on fiction, poetry and life writing, including biography and autobiography, giving you practice in all three forms so that you might discover and develop your particular strengths
  • a sensible, up-to-date guide to going public, to help you to edit your work to a professional standard and to identify and approach suitable publishers
  • a distinctive collection of exciting exercises, spread throughout the workbook to spark your imagination and increase your technical flexibility and control
  • a substantial array of illuminating readings, bringing together extracts from contemporary and classic writings in order to demonstrate a range of techniques that you can use or adapt in your own work.

Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings presents a unique opportunity to benefit from the advice and experience of a team of published authors who have also taught successful writing courses at a wide range of institutions, helping large numbers of new writers to develop their talents as well as their abilities to evaluate and polish their work to professional standards. These institutions include Lancaster University and the University of East Anglia, renowned as consistent producers of published writers.

From inside the book

Contents

Contributors
9
The creative process
17
Keeping a writers notebook
39
Life writing
43
Writing what you know
45
Writing what you come to know
65
Character creation
73
Setting
87
Writing fiction 9 from Cal Bernard MacLaverty
442
from Biggest Elvis P F Kluge
450
from Bodies Jed Mercurio
457
from The Beet Queen Louise Erdrich
458
from Age of Iron J M Coetzee
463
from Another World Pat Barker
465
The Doctor and the Doctors Wife Ernest Hemingway
467
from Rumours of a Hurricane Tim Lott
471

Trying on voices
105
Degrees of knowing
117
Showing and telling
131
Structure
143
The story and the reader
154
Writing poetry
167
Drafting
176
Line
184
Voice
193
Imagery
211
Rhyme
227
Form
242
Theme
256
Starting out
270
A preface
281
Finding a form writing a narrative
294
Using memory
316
Versions of a life
330
Life characters
343
The big changes
359
Later stages
372
Exploring outlets
383
Presentation and proposal
397
READINGS
411
The creative process 1 from Fires Raymond Carver
413
from New Grub Street George Gissing
415
from A Writers Notebook W Somerset Maugham
417
from Becoming a Writer Dorothea Brande
424
from A RealLife Education Susan Minot
427
from Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee
429
The true key to real imagining Lesley Glaister
431
Women writers speak out Pat Barker
434
from The Dark John McGahern
476
Girl Jamaica Kincaid
477
from Purple America Rick Moody
479
from Oxygen Andrew Miller
483
Some thoughts on showing and telling Lindsay Clarke
487
The Artist Patricia Highsmith
492
The Dream Anon
494
The Black Cap Katherine Mansfield
496
could see the smallest things Raymond Carver
501
The Dying Room Georgina Hammick
505
Pigeons at Daybreak Anita Desai
515
from Writing Short Stories Flannery OConnor
523
Writing poetry 29 from The Handless Maiden Vicki Feaver
533
from The Triggering Town Richard Hugo
537
from Nothing Not Giving Messages Edwin Morgan
539
from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Julian Jaynes
541
from The Triggering Town Richard Hugo
544
A scientific romance Dennis Overbye
549
A Memoir of Iris Murdoch John Bayley
551
A memoir Pete Hamill
553
Five Poems Elaine Feinstein
556
A memoir Hilary Mantel
560
from Where I Was From Joan Didion
567
from The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank
572
Explorations of a Romantic Biographer Richard Holmes
577
from In Ethiopia with a Mule Dervla Murphy
581
Adventures of a Romantic Biographer Richard
586
Going public
602
from English Grammar B A Phythian
615
from MHRA Style Guide
630
from Inside Book Publishing Giles Clark
643
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2006)

Linda Anderson is an award-winning novelist (To Stay Alive and Cuckoo, both published by Bodley Head) and writer of short stories, poetry, performance pieces, and critical reviews. Her work has been published in Britain, Ireland, the USA, and Australia. She has taught at Goldsmiths' College and at Lancaster University for ten years, becoming Head of Creative Writing from 1995-2002. She has designed several successful courses including a training programme for new writing tutors and an MA in Creative Writing by distance learning. She has also worked as a producer and director for BBC Radio Drama. She has a PhD in Creative Writing.

Bibliographic information