How do you write a book? Stuart Horwitz helps you do it in three drafts. Three drafts: that's all you need. - The messy draft: which is all about getting it down. - The method draft: which is all about making sense. - The polished draft: which is all about making it good. Finish Your Book in Three Drafts is for outliners who meticulously script every writing session and pantsers who pilot solely by feel. It will help you get past the fear that can land a first draft in the trashcan, and the confusion that can send a second draft into a dizzying tailspin. Because you don't want to be writing the same book for the rest of your life. You can Finish Your Book in Three Drafts provided you approach each draft in the right spirit, and know what action steps to take between drafts. With clarity, honesty, humor, and even videos, Horwitz discusses the best outlook and direction for each of the three drafts so that you can increase your efficiency, satisfaction, and engagement with both your writing process and your final product.

Baseball America invented coverage of the baseball draft. So who better than Baseball America to chronicle 50 years of draft history? As the baseball draft grows in prominence and more and more fans connect winning on draft day to winning in the major leagues, the BA draft book takes you through 50 years of great draft stories and the biggest hits and misses in draft history. The Baseball America 50th Anniversary Draft Book combines all the information of a great reference title with all the great stories that make draft history so rich. For every year of the draft, from 1965-2015, you'll get a complete team by team draft list, with who signed and who didn't, who reached the big leagues and who washed out. And the draft lists are more than just lists; they also feature interesting tidbits on people who became prominent baseball or in other sports or other careers altogether. You'll get the story of the most prominent storylines and people for every year of the draft, as well as plenty of charts and photos to take you in-depth on every year. This book will feature lots of information that has never been publicly available before, especially with signing bonuses from the early days of the draft. It goes without saying that anyone who has an interest in the baseball draft will have to have this book, but anyone who loves good stories (longshots that became major league stars, touted phenoms who washed out) will find fun on every page of this book.

The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacher Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most esteemed writers of recent decades. McPhee offers definitive guidance in the decisions regarding arrangement, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces, and he presents extracts from his work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny. In one essay, he considers the delicate art of getting sources to tell you what they might not otherwise reveal. In another, he discusses how to use flashback to place a bear encounter in a travel narrative while observing that “readers are not supposed to notice the structure. It is meant to be about as visible as someone’s bones.” The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from reporting to drafting to revising—and revising, and revising. Draft No. 4 is enriched by multiple diagrams and by personal anecdotes and charming reflections on the life of a writer. McPhee describes his enduring relationships with The New Yorker and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and recalls his early years at Time magazine. Throughout, Draft No. 4 is enlivened by his keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world.

Rough Draft draws the curtain on the race and class inequities of the Selective Service during the Vietnam War. Amy J. Rutenberg argues that policy makers' idealized conceptions of Cold War middle-class masculinity directly affected whom they targeted for conscription and also for deferment. Federal officials believed that college educated men could protect the nation from the threat of communism more effectively as civilians than as soldiers. The availability of deferments for this group mushroomed between 1945 and 1965, making it less and less likely that middle-class white men would serve in the Cold War army. Meanwhile, officials used the War on Poverty to target poorer and racialized men for conscription in the hopes that military service would offer them skills they could use in civilian life. As Rutenberg shows, manpower policies between World War II and the Vietnam War had unintended consequences. While some men resisted military service in Vietnam for reasons of political conscience, most did so because manpower polices made it possible. By shielding middle-class breadwinners in the name of national security, policymakers militarized certain civilian roles—a move that, ironically, separated military service from the obligations of masculine citizenship and, ultimately, helped kill the draft in the United States.

Laila Piedra doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, and definitely doesn’t sneak into the 21-and-over clubs on the Lower East Side. The only sort of risk Laila enjoys is the peril she writes for the characters in her stories: epic sci-fi worlds full of quests, forbidden love, and robots. Her creative writing teacher has always told her she has a special talent. But three months before graduation, Laila’s number one fan is replaced by Nadiya Nazarenko, a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist who sees nothing at all special about Laila’s writing. A growing obsession with gaining Nazarenko’s approval—and fixing her first-ever failing grade—leads to a series of unexpected adventures. Soon Laila is discovering the psychedelic highs and perilous lows of nightlife, and the beauty of temporary flings and ambiguity. But with her sanity and happiness on the line, Laila must figure out if enduring the unendurable really is the only way to greatness.

"Brilliant, time-tested and clear" advice that will help writers at all stages, in all genres, write their very best book-and then make it better. As a freelance editor for more than a decade, Williams has shepherded books from rough draft to polished manuscripts bought by Big Five houses, university and literary presses, and for independent publishers. Now, she distills everything she's learned from editing hundreds of drafts, coaching writers past creative blocks, and navigating authors through querying and publication, into this useful guide for every step from idea to book. Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book divides writing and revision into distinct stages, with a new focus in each draft. Williams' frank, funny voice encourages writers to tackle even big editing tasks with a sense of humor and a feeling that someone who understands is on their side. With plenty of fresh examples, insider wisdom, and snappy footnotes, Seven Drafts teaches story, character, elements of writing craft and structure, how to seek and use feedback, and the publication process.

Draft Horses and Mules, by Gail Damerow and Alina Rice, distills the great tradition of these impressive animals into a definitive guide. Designed for new or intermediate owners, the book shows readers how to choose an ideal team, feed and house them, maintain their health, ensure effective equine-human communication, select and use equipment properly, and employ the animals in a variety of agricultural, logging, and demonstration tasks.