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 A Handy Guide For the Business and Craft of Writing
"The Craft & Business of Writing" has helped me stream line my writing and has also given me some insight into the business of publishing.
I am not yet published. I have written many essays, stories, and forum posts. I have the ability to write clearly, but there is formating and business issues that every writer needs to know to get published. I bought the book for the purpose of learning the craft and business - I have not been disappointed.
A 392 page book which is spiral bound, with tabs for each section. Each section contains dozens essays, from writers, editors, and people in the business on various topics. The sections are: "Getting Started\ General Business", "Fiction", "Nonfiction", "Children's Writing", and "Poetry". There is a plethora of insights, laid out in an easy to apprehend fashion.
This is more of a reference book for me. I read straight through the "Getting Started" and "Fiction" sections and jumped around reading other areas for inspiration. The essays on characterization, dialog, and "writing a query that sells" were especially helpful. This book will stay near as I revise old projects and work on new ideas. I have more knowledge and confidence to sell my work. I highly recommend "The Craft & Business of Writing".
This book is well worth its price and an important read for anyone who seeks to be a professional writer in one form or another!
I liked this book. It is a compilation of articles that have been previously published in various writing magazines. Since the business of writing has changed over the years, I found the articles dealing with the craft of writing to be better than the ones for the business of writing. However, the articles regarding business were all good - just not enough of them on subjects relevant today. The book has a foreward and 5 chapters as follows:
0. Foreward
1. Introduction
>>Getting started (8)
>>General business (5)
2. Fiction
>>The craft of fiction (10)
>>The business of fiction (7)
3. Nonfiction
>>The craft of nonfiction (5)
>>The business of nonfiction (6)
4. Children's writing
>>The craft of children's writing (8)
>>The business of children's writing (8)
5. Poetry
>>The craft of poetry (8)
>>The business of poetry (4)
A. Contributors
B. Index
I have put in parenthesies above the number of articles each chapter section includes. My favorite articles were these nine:
>>Building a Writing Career (Intro - Getting Started)
>>Writing Groups: Succeeding Together (Children's Writing - Craft)
>>Writing an Irresistible Book Proposal (Nonfiction - Biz)
>>Writing the Query that Sells (Fiction - Biz)
>>Self-Promotion: Maximizing Your Novel's Visibility (Fiction - Biz)
>>The Art of Self-Promotion (Poetry - Biz)
>>Writing and Promoting Books for Babies and Toddlers (Children's Writing - Biz)
>>Oh, The Places I've Been!: Promoting Your Children's Book (Children's Writing - Biz)
>>Surviving the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Review (Children's Writing - Biz)
I found the book to be incomplete. It covers mostly fiction issues and mostly ignores the Internet, Web sites, blogs, and online social networks as important aspects of the business of writing. Also, I didn't think this book did justice for the business of writing nonfiction. And there was no mention or discussion of Print on Demand (POD) for self-publishers, or the impact Amazon has had on the business of writing.
Even though I think the book could have been more comprehensive, and the chapter on nonfiction writing should have been greatly expanded to cover the writing of business books, blogging, and the need for an online author platform, this book is well worth its price and an important read for anyone who seeks to be a professional writer in one form or another. 4 stars!
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