A Writer's Workbook
Description
Aspiring doctors have medical school. Karate students have belts of different colors. Pianists have scales and arpeggios. But what system do writers have for getting and staying "in shape," to help them focus, practice, and make progress? A Writer's Workbook is Caroline Sharp's ingenious collection of exercises to inspire, encourage, warm up, and jump-start anyone who writes. A wise and funny friend who will cheerlead you through even your darkest can't-write days and "every idea I've ever had is awful" nights, she provides encouraging suggestions, hilarious observations, and an amazingly vivid catalogue of writers' neuroses (with advice on overcoming them, of course). From "Roget's Resume" and "Emulating Ernest" to "End Well," "The Rewrite Rut," and "Dear John," the exercises in this generous, wry workbook will keep your ideas fresh, your mind open, and your pen moving.
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Person
Caroline Sharp has a degree in psychology from Princeton University, an MFA from Columbia University, and is a graduate of the Writer's Boot Camp. The mother of two, she lives and writes in New York City.
Content
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Elizabeth Gilbert
Introduction
How to Use This Workbook: A Few Suggestions
Obstacle Page, or . . . Reasons Why You just Can't Write-Today
WARM-UPS
Warm-up, Stretch, and Extend
One-liners: A Quick Warm-up Exercise
Stop 'n' Shop
Roget's Résumé
THE EXERCISES
Obstacle Page: What If You Don't Like Being Alone? Or Writing in the Company of Strangers
Step One: Your Journal Pages
Reviews: What Do You Think?
Character, Character, on the Wall
Picture This
Finish the Thought
Conversation Observation
Obstacle Page: Fear of Failure/Fear of Success, or "Fish of the Day"
Emulating Ernest
Your "Idea Book": A Lifetime Commitment
To Outline or Not to Outline?
Where Have You Gone?
Don't Know Much Geography . . . But I Should!
A Small Snack
If Breakfast Be the Meal of Love
Obstacle Page: Dyslexia and Other Physical Obstacles, or The Pen Is Mightier Than the Problem
Your Daily Grind
A Day in the Life
The Time of Their Lives
The Wrong Date and Time
Objects of Desire
Reuse, Rethink, Recycle
Obstacle Page: Writer's Block, or Surviving a Big Chill
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
Triple Dare/Triple Scare, or How Low Will You Go?
The Wrong Brother
Plot, Plot, Fizz, Fizz
X Marks the Spot
Obstacle Page: The Rewrite Rut, or "My Name's Russell and I'm a Perfectionist"
The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of
End Well
Lost and Found
Bad Appetites
Obstacle Page: The Committee, or Bad Guys: 65/Good Guys: 1
"Dear John . . ."
7-Up
One Last Thought
Appendix
Basic Etiquette for Reading and Responding to Your Peers' Work, or Miss Manners Comes to Your Writing Group
Bibliography
About the Author
