A book of benefit to well-practiced as well as novice writers, full of useful advice, pointers, and prompts.
A welcome vade mecum on the business and art of writing for publication.
“Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” So growled the prolific sports journalist Red Smith, who had to bleed daily. As Poets & Writers veteran editors Larimer and Gannon note, the business of publishing has changed considerably since Smith’s heyday, but the verities are eternal. “Writing is a lifelong endeavor,” they write, “and one that doesn’t end when you finish a poem, story, essay, or longer writing project.” That is just so, and against that truth and others, they propose sets of “action items,” such as making a list of your personal goals as a writer, at first short-term (daily word count achieved, for instance) and then longer-term career objectives. These items are highly specific: If you want to sign up for an MFA, they write, then research which ones fit your needs best, interview administrators and students, and otherwise do your homework. This specificity is the most helpful part of a book that is altogether instructive, if sometimes a touch discouraging: As Larimer and Gannon are quick to point out, in 2017, the median income for full-time writers was $20,300, a shade south of the poverty line for a family of three. For those willing to brave the long odds, the authors offer a few bits of cheerleading, including the thought that it’s OK to “give yourself permission to brag a bit”—which is to say, if someone asks what you do, call yourself a writer and own it without apology. Among the many highlights of this book for beginning writers is a list of writers’ conferences that appeal to underrepresented constituencies in a publishing world that, because it’s so economically marginal, tends to favor those advantaged enough not to have to worry about income.
A book of benefit to well-practiced as well as novice writers, full of useful advice, pointers, and prompts.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2307-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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