So You Want to Write (2nd Edition): How to Master the Craft of Writing Fiction and Memoir

A featured selection of the Writer’s Digest Book Club; chosen by The Writer Magazine as a Best Book of the Year; compared by the American Library Association to Strunk and White’s classic The Elements of Style; acclaimed by critics, students and teachers and adopted by universities across the country, the unique collaboration between a major American novelist and a publisher is back in a revised second edition, bigger and better than ever.

The most useful and entertaining writing book on the market, the updated second edition has new exercises and expanded essays, covering every aspect of writing and publishing fiction and memoir:

How to begin a piece so that a reader can’t put it down
How to create compelling characters
How professional writers use dialogue
How to narrow a strategy for telling the story of your life
How to write about painful material without coming off as a victim

Included are hundreds of insider tips, such as:

The seven important things when writing about loved ones
The 10 most destructive things writers do
What no one will tell you about rejection letters
FAQs about agents and how much writers really earn
What to do if your work is continually rejected

Marge Piercy is the author of 16 novels, including the bestsellers Gone to Soldiers and The Longings of Women and the classic Woman On the Edge of Time, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir, Sleeping With Cats. The author of 16 books of poetry, she is the most anthologized poet of her generation. Her work has been translated into 18 languages. Ira Wood is a publisher as well as the author of two novels The Kitchen Man and Going Public and the co-author (with Marge Piercy) of the erotic thriller Storm Tide. Their workshops, given nationwide, emphasize the importance of the writer's craft and overcoming the inner and outer barriers to creativity.