Years ago, a national magazine reported a conversation between Frank Sinatra and Spiro Agnew, who had just fallen from power and glory as Vice-President under Richard Nixon and like many of the idle famous, decided to turn his hand to writing. He and Sinatra debated whether his first undertaking should be “a novel or a serious book,” whereupon Sinatra advised him to write a serious book first.
And yet, most students realize that the same effort expended upon almost any other enterprise would be vastly more profitable. There’s something mystical at work here, and we should think about it. The money you make by having a novel or short story published isn’t like other sorts of money. The cashier at K Mart or your attendant at the local Gulf station may not acknowledge the difference, but you know how that money was earned. It was earned by selling the trophy you brought back from a long and exhausting hunt somewhere in the wilds of your imagination – a place where you ventured, equipped with all the suitable accouterments of craft and guided by your own polestar of inspiration.
An edition of A Worker's Writebook: How Language Makes Stories
(2011)
A Worker's Writebook: How Language Makes Stories
by Jack Matthews
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Last edited by Robert Nagle
January 4, 2012 | History
Since the early 1990s, Jack Matthews has distributed a photocopied version of this 75,000 word writing guide to students in his fiction writing classes at Ohio University. This guide offers insight about how successful writers mold raw experiences into a story and how language helps you to do that. It offers lots of good examples and practical advice for getting a story idea off the ground; it analyzes several stories (including one of Matthews’ own) and offers several paradigms for understanding how stories work. Erudite, witty, idiosyncratic, serendipitous, mischievous, sesquipedalian, entertaining, introspective and colorful: these are adjectives which come to mind when reading this book.
86 year old author Jack Matthews has not only written more than 15 works of fiction, he was distinguished professor of Fiction Writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio for over 4 decades. Winner of Guggenheim and several arts grants, Matthews has been anthologized widely, translated into several languages and nominated for a National Book Award. His own books have been praised by Eudora Welty, Anthony Burgess, Shirley Ann Grau, Tim O’Brien, Doris Grumbach, Walker Percy and a host of other famous and highly accomplished authors.
Publish Date
2011
Publisher
Personville Press
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writing guides, writing reference, creative writingShowing 1 featured edition. View all 1 editions?
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| January 4, 2012 | Edited by Robert Nagle | Edited without comment. |
| January 4, 2012 | Edited by Robert Nagle | Edited without comment. |
| January 4, 2012 | Edited by Robert Nagle | added description |
| January 4, 2012 | Edited by Robert Nagle | Edited without comment. |
| January 4, 2012 | Created by Robert Nagle | Added new book. |