Starting from Scratch - Hardcover

Brown, Rita Mae

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553052462 ISBN 13: 9780553052466

Publisher: Bantam, 1988

Synopsis

From the best-selling author of  Rubyfruit Jungle and  Bingo, here is a writers' manual as provocative,  frank, and funny as her fiction. Unlike most  writers' guides, this one had as much to do with how  writers live as with mastering the tools of their  trade. Rita Mae Brown begins with a very personal  account of her own career, from her days as a young  poet who had written a novel no publisher wanted  to take a chance on, right up to her recent  adventures as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a sassy style  that makes her outspoken advice as entertaining as  it is useful, she provides straight talk about  paying the rent while maintaining the energy to  write; and dealing with agents, publishers, critics,  and the publicity circus; about pursuingj  ournalisim, academia, or screen-writing; and about rejecting  the Hemingway myth of the hard-living,  hard-drinking genius. In addition Brown, a former teacher or  writing, offers a serious examination of the  writer's tool--language, plotting, characters,  symbolism--plus exercises to sharpen the ear for dialogue,  and a fascinating, annoted reading list of  important works from the seventh century to the late  twentieth.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

About the Author

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

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Rubyfruit Jungle and other novels, film and TV scripter, Brown here gives nonwriters and writers alike a book to enjoy quite apart from its instructional value. The tone is stern but empathetic, spiced by the author's sassy wit and full of information on the writer's craft. Starting from scratch, Brown focuses on the wonders of the English language, enriched by other tongues, and the need to understand how to use words in their great variety: "I'll be brutally frank. If you don't know Latin, you don't know English." In later sections she covers the roles of editor, publisher and film professionals, the pros and cons of each medium, of computers, etc. as applied to writers. Candidly describing her own experiences, Brown makes us realize that writers are uncontrollably driven to write, "even though the pay is ridiculous."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0553052462
• ISBN 13: 9780553052466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 254