This is a great book, no matter what stage of writing you’re at! –The Writer Magazine

Here is a must-have for would-be writers. Put this on the shelf right beside Strunk and White. –Booklist

Addresses all the elements of successful writing. –Tampa Tribune

Advice on getting your work published is worth the cost of the book alone. –St. Petersburg Times

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 a New York Times best-selling novelist and memoirist. Ira Wood is a novelist and publisher. Their workshops, given nationally, address overcoming the inner and outer barriers to creativity.