| Author/Contributor(s): | Brown, Rita Mae |
| Publisher: | Bantam |
| Date: | 3/1/1989 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Condition: | NEW |
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 pursuing journalisim, 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.