Share Your Journey: Mastering Personal Writing: The (Surprisingly Easy) Techniques Professional Writers Use to Write Personal Memoirs and Travel Stories That Connect with Editors and Readers - Softcover

Sochaczewski, Paul Spencer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 2940573166 ISBN 13: 9782940573165

Publisher: Explorer's Eye Press, 2015

Synopsis

Your hero’s journey can take many forms. Perhaps you met your soulmate at a cooking class in Tuscany and now make fresh pasta every evening — you’re 40 kilos overweight but happy. You took your eight-year-old daughter to the lake where your parents took you as a child — she caught her first fish. Or maybe you want to record your family’s history. How Grandfather Ishmael escaped Lithuania hours before he was to be arrested for horse theft, how Grandma Chen left China penniless, then through hard work and a deft touch at the mahjong table, became one of Singapore’s leading real estate tycoons. 

Perhaps you aren’t too sure how to start your story, how to focus, how to make it interesting for other people. The Ten Writing Tips in Share Your Journey will give you the tools and confidence to write more effective blogs, write for online and print publications, and make more effective presentations.

LEARN HOW TO:

· Recognize the dynamics of your own hero’s journey

· Get started by writing just one scene

· Avoid the dreaded “info dump”

· Create instant intimacy with the reader

· Tell the story by following the Little Red Riding Hood Strategy

· Create conflict with the Nancy Reagan Principle

· Keep ’em hanging on with the Scheherazade Scenario

· Invoke the Story of One to represent the Story of Many

· Write like Steven Spielberg directs

· Eliminate fluff like Michelangelo

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Spencer Sochaczewski has written An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles, The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen, the five-volume Curious Encounters of the Human Kind series, Soul of the Tiger (with Jeff McNeely), and other acclaimed books and some six hundred bylined articles in leading international publications. He has been invited to run his writing workshops in more than twenty countries, helping writers worldwide tell their personal stories.

Review:

"Share Your Journey is to good writing as Joy of Cooking is to good food. I wish all my students had this book before taking my writing classes; hell, I wish I had this book earlier in my career. It's smart, fun, and every page contains nuggets of essential advice."
--Gary Goshgarian, professor, Northeastern University; As Gary Braver, bestselling and award-winning author of Tunnel Vision

"If I had to parachute only one book to a Robinson Crusoe-type stranded on a deserted island who wanted to write his personal story, I have no doubt it would be Paul Sochaczewski's Share Your Journey: Mastering Personal Writing. The tool kit Paul offers allows the person with a story and some raw talent to build a word castle that rises to the heavens."
--Christopher G. Moore, author of the Vincent Calvino novels and Heart Talk

"... I'm delighted that Paul's wisdom and sense of humor animate his new book, Share Your Journey. Many major writers have offered advice - think of John Steinbeck, William Safire, or George Orwell -- but Paul's Ten Tips, buttressed by some great to-the-point examples, will stand among the best advice a nonfiction writer can ever hope to have."
--James Clad, former professor at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University; author of Behind the Myth: 
Business, Money and Power in Southeast Asia 

"I had just completed a new book and was pleased with it, until I read Share Your Journey and realized how I could make it better. Many writing guides turn what should be a liberating experience into drudgery and scolding rules. Share Your Journey is different; it helps you unleash an inner voice you may not have realized was inside you. It's also great fun. As a writer of fiction and biography infused with personal travel, I appreciate its originality and power. I wish many of the fellow writers I review would adapt its suggestions!"
--Nigel Barley, author of Island of Dreams, White Rajah, and In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles

"Paul Sochaczewski learned his craft slowly and carefully over a period of decades and he now shares the secrets to why he's successful in a book. Based on his writing workshops, he offers ten simple and obvious but too often overlooked guidelines, then amply illustrates each with samples from his own works and a library full of other writers (many of them household names), demonstrating how easily it can be done." 
--Jerry Hopkins, former editor of Rolling Stone and bestselling author of No One Here Gets Out Alive, Bangkok Babylon, Elvis: The Biography, and Romancing the East

"In Share Your Journey Paul Sochaczewski immediately seduces the reader to enter a land of exotic literary chocolates, emeralds, and hallucinatory dreams ... This book is caviar for those who long to express themselves."
--Harry Rolnick, author of The Chinese Gourmet, The Complete Book of Coffee, and Spice Chronicles: Exotic Tales of a Hungry Traveler

"If you want to write, if you want to improve your writing, if you want your writing to leap off the page and click its heels in mid-air, read this book and follow its good advice. This is a lifetime's wisdom, offered by a pro."
--Thomas Bass, author of The Spy Who Loved Us, Vietnamerica, and The Predictors; professor of English and journalism at State University of New York

"Many writing-advice books tell you how to write but don't show you how to do it. This book fulfills the writing mantra, "show don't tell." It provides excellent examples of good as well as stilted writing. Sochaczewski does it with humour, cartoons, memorable visuals, and practical advice. The Ten Writing Tips are great signposts for anyone attempting to write a personal story. I will recommend this book to my creative writing students."
--Josephine Chia, creative writing mentor in UK and Singapore; author of Frog Under a Coconut Shell and Kampong Spirit - Gotong Royong

About this edition

• Publisher: Explorer's Eye Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 2940573166
• ISBN 13: 9782940573165
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 386