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Creative Writing The Essential Guide
Tim Atkinson
Guides you through the writing process from the ideas stage through to the finish-line and on to the threshold of publication.
Whether you’re an established writer or a beginner, whether you see writing as a potential source of income, the road to stardom or as a personally rewarding spare-time occupation, this book will guide you through the writing process from the ideas stage through to the finish-line and on to the threshold of publication.
Creative writing is for everyone, whether as a richly rewarding hobby, a means of self-discovery, a vehicle for self-expression or as a possible means of earning a living. The chances of hitting the Sunday Times best-seller list might be slim but if you’re serious about developing your talent as a creative writer, if you need ideas and tips for getting your work finished, accepted and published then Creative Writing The Essential Guide is the book for you.
By the end of this book you will be able to use a variety of different prompts for your ideas even when you’re not feeling inspired. You’ll have a better idea of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer; you’ll be able to look at your own work dispassionately and you’ll have the skills to edit and improve your work - making it the very best that it can be.
The Author
Tim Atkinson is an award-winning UK blogger and a well-established author. A teacher for over twenty years, he was a regular contributor to the Times Educational Supplement before exchanging the classroom for a career of full-time writing. He is the author of several non-fiction books (including Fatherhood: The Essential Guide) as well as the acclaimed novel, Writing Therapy. He has also written plays, poetry and edited an anthology of new writing, ‘Tiny Acorns’. His website - www.bringingupcharlie.co.uk - is among the most popular blogs in the UK and has featured in the national press as well as on radio and television. Tim has an MA in Education and a Diploma in Creative Writing and is a creative writing tutor and a mentor
http://www.need2knowbooks.co.uk/creative-writing-the-essential-guide/
Other titles in The Essential Guide series include:
Writing for Magazines
Self-Publishing
Writing Poetry
Writing Non-fiction
Writing Romantic Fiction
Writing Dialogue
Review:
“Creative writing is for everybody,” the blurb proclaims, and assures potential readers that “whether you’re an established writer or a beginner, whether you see writing as a potential source of income, the road to stardom or as a personally rewarding spare-time occupation,” this is the book for you. Of course, authors are seldom responsible for their blurbs, and Atkinson makes it clear between the covers very early that “making a decent living” out of writing is a very slim possibility, and he specifies his main target audience as “the many thousands of would-be authors serious about developing [their] talent as a creative writer.”
The book itself is extremely hands-on, with text box exercises on nearly every page. Many of these will be familiar to experienced writing teachers, but none the worse for that, and Atkinson doesn’t shy away from challenging questions at an early stage (for example, on p18, “Write your own ‘poetics’ now. What do you think literature is for?”). There are some rather shallow and unsupported assertions (“The art of the playwright is probably the noblest among the various creative writing genres”), and the overall structure seems slightly forced. What, for example, is the logic behind having a Chapter 4 called “Fact and Fiction” and a Chapter 11 “Writing Non-Fiction”? And why (given the author’s vast experience of same) isn’t there more about writing for new media?
However, overall, if you’re looking for a book to give you the kick necessary to actually try some writing, it might do the trick.
Steve May
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