How to Be a Writer: Building Your Creative Skills Through Practice and Play

Athletes practice. Musicians practice. As a writer you need to do the same. Whether you have dreams of writing a novel or a memoir or a collection of poems, or you simply want to improve your everyday writing, this innovative book will show you how to build your skills by way of practice.

Through playful and purposeful exercises, you'll develop your natural aptitude for communication, strengthening your ability to come up with things to say, and your ability to get those things into the minds (and the hearts) of readers. You'll learn to:

• Train and develop your writer's powers—creativity, memory, observation, imagination, curiosity, and the subconscious
• Understand the true nature of the relationship between you and your readers
• Find your writer's voice
• Get required writing projects done so you have more time for the writing you want to do
• And much more

Empowering and down-to-earth, How to Be a Writer gives you the tools you need, and tells you what (and how) to practice so that you can become the writer you want to be.

• Spellbinding Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Achieving Excellence and Captivating Readers
• Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
• Plot Perfect: How to Build Unforgettable Stories Scene by Scene
• Writing Deep Scenes: Plotting Your Story Through Action, Emotion, and Theme
• It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences
• Understanding Show, Don't Tell: And Really Getting It
• DIY MFA: Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community
• The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
• The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises that Transform Your Fiction
• Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise