A gentle, imaginative introduction to the skills all creative writers need. Breaking down the elements that go into successful imaginative works, The Creative Writer leads aspiring writers through the skills needed to construct each. The assignments, designed to make students more aware of language and more confident in their own ingenuity, build on each other until beginning creative writers have successfully created their own stories, poems, and essays. • Simple but innovative exercises encourage young writers to strengthen their vocabulary and become aware of the patterns of sentences • Legends and folklore are used to teach point of view, characterization, plotting, and other vital skills • Classic poetry serves as a model for the student’s own original poems • Unlike most “how to write” books, The Creative Writer is designed to be used in a mentor/student relationship, with teaching, guidance, and evaluation tips provided for the mentor or teacher • Can be used as a complement to Writing With Skill or on its own

Following on the heels of Lisa Cron's breakout first book, Wired for Story, this writing guide reveals how to use cognitive storytelling strategies to build a scene-by-scene blueprint for a riveting story. It’s every novelist’s greatest fear: pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into writing hundreds of pages only to realize that their story has no sense of urgency, no internal logic, and so is a page one rewrite. The prevailing wisdom in the writing community is that there are just two ways around this problem: pantsing (winging it) and plotting (focusing on the external plot). Story coach Lisa Cron has spent her career discovering why these methods don’t work and coming up with a powerful alternative, based on the science behind what our brains are wired to crave in every story we read (and it’s not what you think). In Story Genius Cron takes you, step-by-step, through the creation of a novel from the first glimmer of an idea, to a complete multilayered blueprint—including fully realized scenes—that evolves into a first draft with the authority, richness, and command of a riveting sixth or seventh draft.

The Psychology of Creative Writing takes a scholarly, psychological look at multiple aspects of creative writing, including the creative writer as a person, the text itself, the creative process, the writer's development, the link between creative writing and mental illness, the personality traits of comedy and screen writers, and how to teach creative writing. This book will appeal to psychologists interested in creativity, writers who want to understand more about the magic behind their talents, and educated laypeople who enjoy reading, writing, or both. From scholars to bloggers to artists, The Psychology of Creative Writing has something for everyone.

“An original, fascinating, and beautifully written reckoning . . . of that great human passion: to write.”—Kay Redfield Jamison, national bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind Why is it that some writers struggle for months to come up with the perfect sentence or phrase while others, hunched over a keyboard deep into the night, seem unable to stop writing? In The Midnight Disease, neurologist Alice W. Flaherty explores the mysteries of literary creativity: the drive to write, what sparks it, and what extinguishes it. She draws on intriguing examples from medical case studies and from the lives of writers, from Franz Kafka to Anne Lamott, from Sylvia Plath to Stephen King. Flaherty, who herself has grappled with episodes of compulsive writing and block, also offers a compelling personal account of her own experiences with these conditions. “[Flaherty] is the real thing . . . and her writing magically transforms her own tragedies into something strange and whimsical almost, almost funny.”—The Washington Post “This is interesting, heated stuff.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Brilliant . . . [a] precious jewel of a book . . . that sparkles with some fresh insight or intriguing fact on practically every page.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Flaherty mixes memoir, meditation, compendium and scholarly reportage in an odd but absorbing look at the neurological basis of writing and its pathologies . . . Writers will delight in the way information and lore are interspersed.”—Publishers Weekly

The second volume of the four-book series that guides students into the creation of sophisticated short fiction and mature poetry. Complements Peace Hill Press’s expository series Writing With Skill by providing the imaginative element that many students want. Unlike most “how to write” books, these are designed to be used in a mentor/student relationship, with teaching, guidance, and evaluation tips provided for the mentor or teacher. All exercises build towards the production of finished creative pieces. Sequential, logical, step-by-step instruction. The second level builds on the introductory volume, The Creative Writer: Five Finger Exercises, but can be started directly by older students. Instruction in the five essentials of fiction: plot, characters, dialogue, point of view, and setting. Offers guidance in the essential art of poetry: sound, rhythm, word choice, and poem construction.

Invite your jittery mind into quiet slips of timed or untimed writing experiments that are designed to encourage your timid heart to forge forgotten feelings and entice your shy-self to make friends with emerging emotions. With a bounty of prompts to select from, you’ll be inspired to explore all the wacky, confusing, brave, soul-stirring wonderings and wanderings of your emerging life’s inner treasure in a way that’s sure to unleash what you most need to say. In this book you’ll find: • On-the-Spot Drops that offer quick “free-fall” prompts on different themes, such as short-winded poems and seven-line stories. • Mini Memoirs to unlock personal narrative to share, or not. • Suddenly a Story suggestions to explore feelings and states of being like fear, reluctance, compassion, kindness, anxiety, anger, jealousy, happiness, and more. • Surprise Yourself Surveys for those who think they know everything about themselves. • Untie-Your-Mind Word Lists to jump-start stalled imaginations. • Definition Decoders to introduce new ideas and styles of writing. Created especially for tweens, teens, and other earthlings, this book provides you with a chance to create imaginative poems, stories, fragments, and real-life on-the-spot sketches. All that’s required is that you take a breath, relax, reset, and leap write in!

Are you curious to understand more about what is going on inside your head? Do you want to help your clients become more successful and happy? Are you keen to up your coaching game by using neuroscience to help clients understand why they are stuck and what to do about it? Through a mix of up-to-date neuroscientific research and real coaching stories, this book will help you to: - Generate deeper questioning through a layer of different, helpful, brain-based language - Enable clients to unpick their stuck state by understanding the neuroscience behind it - Help clients to see they have multiple options through neuroplasticity - Liberate clients by dampening non-serving neural circuits - Provide an empirical basis for effective and lasting change