2nd Edition
Creative Writing A Workbook with Readings
Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings provides a complete creative writing course: from ways to jump-start your writing and inspire your creativity, right through to presenting your work to agents and publishers.
It covers the genres of fiction, poetry and life writing (including autobiography, biography and travel writing), combining discussions of technique with readings and exercises to guide you step by step towards becoming more adept at creative writing.
The second edition has been updated and in large part newly written, with readings by a diverse group of contemporary authors displaying a variety of styles and approaches. Each chapter also features an array of inspiring writing exercises, enabling you to experiment with different methods and discover your strengths. Above all, Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings will help you to develop your abilities while nurturing your individual voice as a writer.
Contributors
Introduction
Part 1: The creative process
1: Stimulating creativity and imagination
2: Writing what you know
3: Writing what you come to know
Part 2: Writing fiction
4: Character
5: Setting
6: Point of view
7: Showing and telling
8: Structure and time
9: The story and your readers
10: Editing fiction
Part 3: Writing poetry
11: Introduction to poetry
12: Voice and language
13: Poetic structure
14: Rhyme and metre
15: Revising poetry
Part 4: Life writing
16: Starting out
17: Finding a form
18: Using memory
19: Versions of a life
20: Life characters
Part 5: Going public
21: Going public
22: Presenting your work
READINGS
Part 1: The creative process
1.1 from ‘Fires’
1.2 from ‘A Real-life Education’
2.1 ‘Death of a Naturalist’
2.2 from ‘Netherley’
2.3 from ‘Tomorrow is Too Far’
2.4 ‘Memory: The True Key to Real Imagining’
3.1‘The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team’
3.2 from Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out
Part 2: Writing fiction
4.1 from ‘A Sheltered Woman’
5.1 from ‘The Edge of the Shoal’
6.1 ‘First Journeyman’
6.2 ‘Becky Finch’
6.3 ‘Love Silk Food’
7.1 ‘Going the Last Inch: Some Thoughts on Showing and Telling’
7.2 ‘The Dream’
7.3 ‘Moonlight’
7.4 from ‘Freddy Barrandov Checks … in?’
7.5 from ‘Byron Francis’
7.6 ‘I Could See the Smallest Things’
7.7 ‘Tomorrow is Too Far’
8.1 from The Art of Writing Fiction
8.2 ‘Pigeons at Daybreak’
9.1 ‘Bodies’
9.2 ‘Tattoo’
10.1 ‘Through a Tangle of Branches: Reworking the Poem’
10.2 from ‘Putting Coyolxauhqui Together: A Creative Process’
10.3 from ‘Redrafting and Editing’
10.4 from Steering the Craft
Part 4: Life writing
16.1 from Long Time No See
16.2 from ‘Little Boxes’
17.1 from The Haunting of Alma Fielding
17.2 ‘Red Riviera’
17. 3 ‘Well done, No. 3777!’
18.1 from Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir
18.2 from Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging
18.3 from Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging
19.1 from The Diary of a Young Girl
19.2 ‘Darkness and Light’
19.3 from Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer
19.4 from ‘Time Travel on the St. Lawrence River’
20.1 from Bad Blood
20.2 from Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star
20.3 from Foreigners: Three English Lives
Part 5: Going public
21.1 from Tips From a Publisher
21.2 ‘Considering Self-Publishing: A Guide’
22.1 Synopsis for Dark Aemilia
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Index
Biography
Sally O’Reilly has taught at The Open University, Brunel University and the University of Portsmouth, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Brunel University. Her publications include Dark Aemilia (Myriad Editions/Picador US, 2014), which was nominated for the Kirkus Reviews Fiction prize in the US, and How to be a Writer (Piatkus, 2011). She has been shortlisted for the Ian St James short story award and the Cosmopolitan short story prize. She also writes for the Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Conversation, the Evening Standard and New Scientist.
Jane Yeh holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from Harvard University, the University of Iowa, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Royal Holloway, University of London. Her publications include Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward and Aldeburgh poetry prizes, and Discipline (Carcanet, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She has been a mentor for the Ledbury Poetry Critics programme and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University.
‘A wonderful, invaluable resource, full of useful frameworks and ideas. Highly recommended.’ Irenosen Okojie FRSL MBE, Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature
‘Offers pertinent, perceptive and plentiful advice for those first starting out or building their skills in creative writing. Enlivening chapter discussions rub shoulders with well-chosen readings to create dynamic conversations which it feels a pleasure to eavesdrop on.’ Andrew McMillan, Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University
‘A refreshingly practical book that invites writers at whatever stage to dive in and out with exercises, encouragement, information, reading and guidance.’Yvonne Battle-Felton, fiction writer, Sheffield Hallam University
‘Creative Writing is astonishing in its thoughtfulness: there's a calm, authoritative thoroughness about the way skills and topics are introduced, supported by readings, and paired with exercises. This would be a very useful workbook for instructors as well as new writers.’ Marshall Moore, Course Leader in Creative Writing at Falmouth University
‘Offers practical, clear, and substantial advice for writing in a range of genres. As you will find from using this imaginative, generous and ingenious book, the journey will surprise and transform you.’ David Morley FRSL, Warwick Writing Programme at Warwick University, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing
‘This distils the basic elements of complicated artistic practice into inspiring guidelines that will enhance the work of both students and teachers of creative writing.’ Winsome Pinnock FRSL, Associate Professor Emerita at Kingston University
