Washoe County Library System

"In The Art of Revision: The Last Word, Peter Ho Davies takes up an often discussed yet frequently misunderstood subject. He begins by addressing the invisibility of revision--even though it's an essential part of the writing process, readers typically only see a final draft, leaving the practice shrouded in mystery. Davies also looks beyond literature to work that has been adapted or rewritten, such as books made into films, stories rewritten by...

"A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia Davis"--

A step-by-step guide to constructing a paper that is technically correct, original and compelling! The viewer will recognize the value of true scholarship; master essential research techniques; dramatically improve writing; keep motivated, productive, and relaxed through the entire process. The strategies learned will apply to any research paper assignment on any topic - in high school, college, graduate school, and beyond.

"The sentence is the common ground where every writer walks. 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. Using minimal technical terms and sources ranging from the Bible and Shakespeare to George Orwell and Maggie Nelson, as well as scientific studies of what can best fire the reader's mind, author Joe Moran shows how we...

A young boy wants to write a story, just like his big sister. But there's a problem, he tells her. Though he knows his letters, he doesn't know many words. His sister patiently explains, "Every story starts with a single word and every word starts with a single letter. Why don't you start there, with a letter?" So the boy tries. He writes a letter. An easy letter. The letter I. And from that one skinny letter, the story grows, and the little boy discovers...

The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan's first book of new writing since 2004's Chronicles: Volume One-and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He...

Explores the origins of writing and the historic relationship between humans and their written words, and discusses the threat posed to the art of writing and the thought patterns behind it by the digital age.

"In this witty "how-to" guide, Wisława Szymborska has nothing but sympathy for the labors of would-be writers generally: "I myself started out with rotten poetry and stories," she confesses in this collection of pieces culled from the advice she gave-anonymously-for many years in the well-known Polish journal Literary Life. She returns time and again to the mundane business of writing poetry properly, that is to say, painstakingly and sparingly....