English Writing

To write for the theater, you need to know about theater. Ideas are easy to come by. Examine your background, interest, and beliefs. Examine the world around you. Exercises can help you come up with ideas. Choose the audience you want to reach, and write to that audience.

In this incisive collection, Sharon Butala reflects on the ways her life has changed as she's grown old. She knows that society fails the elderly massively, and so she tackles ageism and loneliness, friendship and companionship. She writes with pointed wit and acerbic humour about dinner parties and health challenges and forgetfulness and complicated family relationships and the pandemic—and lettuce. And she tells her story with the tremendous skill and beauty of a writer who has masterfully honed her craft over the course of her storied four-decade career.

Travelers often become enchanted with the first country that captures their hearts and gives them license to be free. For Wade Davis, it was Colombia. Now in a masterly new book, Davis tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of a land that is home to the greatest ecological and geographical diversity on the planet.

Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all.

Inspired by the timeless wisdom of Brother Lawrence, this 31-day devotional shows you how to walk with God in the middle of your real life—not just in prayer, but in laundry, commutes, email inboxes, and even uncertainty.

Do you want to make better music? How about achieving a professional sound? Or even being able to work in professional studios? Most musicians dream of making professional sounding music. But in order to create great music, they need to understand the steps and tools involved. With proper skill development, creativity, and knowledge, anyone can reach that professional level. This audiobook will show you how, whether you want to build a studio, work in one, start a label, or just make better music.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner, Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed West Face of the remote 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1985. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead. For three days he wrestled with guilt as they prepared to return home. Then a cry in the night took them out with torches, where they found Joe, badly injured.

The Words of My Perfect Teacher is the classic commentary on the preliminary practices of the Longchen Nyingtig—one of the best-known cycles of teachings and a spiritual treasure of the Nyingmapa school—the oldest Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Patrul Rinpoche makes the technicalities of his subject accessible through a wealth of stories, quotations, and references to everyday life. His style of mixing broad colloquialisms, stringent irony, and poetry has all the life and atmosphere of an oral teaching.

Memoir writing isn't just for celebrities and politicians. For anyone prone to self-reflection and ready to give shape to your memories and experiences, Memoir Writing For Dummies is your definitive guide. This book offers a concrete roadmap for writing a captivating memoir. Get advice on exploring your past, mapping out your story, and perfecting your plot, setting, character, and dialogue. You'll also find information on recruiting the help of AI and digital media for a more dynamic storytelling experience.

This masterfully well-constructed bundle contains five books by four expert bloggers.

Is your dream to write a beautiful song full of emotions? Is it your goal to create a fast-paced, energizing track? With the help of this book, you can turn your dreams into reality. Many people just think songwriting is too complicated and never even attempt to achieve their goals. If you want to write and perform a song for any reason whatsoever but just can't seem to get started, then this book is most definitely for you.

Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West’s classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans and the uneasy relationships among its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country’s history as well as its daily life.

Known for his meaty seriocomic novels–expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow–Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life.

The sentence is the common ground where every writer walks. A poet writes in sentences, but so does the unsung author who came up with Items trapped in doors cause delays. A good sentence can be written (and read) by anyone if we simply give it the gift of our time, and it is as close as most of us will get to making something truly beautiful. Enter acclaimed author Professor Joe Moran. Using minimal technical terms, First You Write a Sentence is his unpedantic but authoritative explanation of how the most ordinary words can be turned into verbal constellations of extraordinary grace.

With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet. She walks listeners through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others. This handbook is an invaluable glimpse into Oliver’s prolific mind—a must-have for all poetry-lovers.

Jack and Sam married Abby. It was supposed to be for forever, but lately, Abby wonders where her alpha male has gone. Jack has retreated, and life has become decidedly vanilla. It isn't the true marriage she and Sam wanted. Sam and Abby know the time has come to fight for what they need. A call from his mentor forces Jack to revisit the club where he discovered his sexuality. Jack's half-brother is in the city and interested in a little blackmail. Can Jack handle two defiant subs and a brother in need of some tough love?

Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness? In his vital, bewitching, inspiring classic, Robert Macfarlane sets out in search of the wildness that remains.

A unique and significant guide to selling more books through personal appearances and online interviews, brimming with information and resources as well as tips and ideas from nearly two dozen author-speaker professionals.The most powerful tool in your book promotion toolkit is your personality. The fact is that personality sells books.

In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.