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How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead

by Ariel Gore

How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead Cover

ISBN13: 9780307346483
ISBN10: 030734648x
Condition: Standard
All Product Details

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

This may come as a shock, but brilliant writing and clever wordplay do not a published author make. True, you'll actually have to write if you want to be a writer, but ultimately literary success is about much more than putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys). Before you snap your pencil in half with frustration, please consider the advice writer, teacher, and self-made lit star Ariel Gore offers in this useful guide to realizing your literary dreams.

If you find yourself writing when you should be sleeping and scribbling notes on odd pieces of paper at every stoplight, you might as well enjoy the fruits of your labor. How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead is an irreverent yet practical guide that combines solid writing advice with guerrilla marketing and promotion techniques guaranteed to launch you into print — and into the limelight. You'll learn how to:

  • Reimagine yourself as a buzz-worthy artist and entrepreneur
  • Get your work and your name out in the world where other people can read it
  • Be an anthology slut and a brazen self-promoter
  • Apply real-world advice and experience from lit stars like Dave Barry, Susie Bright, and Dave Eggers to your own career
Cheaper than an M.F.A. but just as informative, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead is your catapult to lit stardom. Just don't forget to thank Ariel Gore for her inspiring, hands-on plan in the acknowledgments page of your first novel!

Review:

"One of the snappiest, most useful books a writer for hire is likely to read." Booklist

Synopsis:

This irreverent and empowering guide helps aspiring writers turn themselves into buzzworthy authors.

About the Author

Ariel Gore is the author of The Hip Mama Survival Guide, The Mother Trip, and Atlas of the Human Heart, as well as the novel The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
librarylapin, June 10, 2008 (view all comments by librarylapin)
I have always loved Ariel Gore's writing. She could write a book about toilet paper and I would read it but this has been by far my favorite. I had not written in six years and after reading this book I felt like I could do anything and have written quite a few pieces since. It is multilayered and includes several interviews. If you have no idea what kind of writer you are, you will find yourself here.
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(3 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
mdwriter, May 28, 2008 (view all comments by mdwriter)
Most books that I've purchased on the writing craft have been boring and dry. I typically do not even finish reading these books and feel silly for purchasing them. Gore's is the first book on writing that I've read that has useful and practical information. Best of all it is fun to read and inspiring.
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(2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
Debra Zyla, November 12, 2007 (view all comments by Debra Zyla)
If you've been waiting for someone to hold your hand through the publishing process and answer with candor every nagging and seemingly silly question about what it is to be a published writer (I don't need an M.F.A.?!), here you go. Ariel Gore introduces each section and chapter with pithy quotes from the dead and the living and includes Q & A sessions with writers and comics and other self-promoting geniuses throughout. (Magnificent Meteor's advice and sage wisdom is undoubtedly the most comforting.)

After just a third of the way through my reading, filled with a sense of urgency, renewed vision, and gratitude, I composed the Acknowledgments page of whatever it is I'm currently working on. In it I have included this hip mother of a writer with the few other women I consider my literary girlfriends, those goddesses who offer empathy and humor and a reassuring touch before stepping back and giving me that blessed sweet kick in the ass all writers need from time to time.

This is your wake-up call from Ariel Gore.

I'm Debra Zyla and I am a writer.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780307346483
Subtitle:
Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights
Author:
Gore, Ariel
Publisher:
Three Rivers Press (CA)
Subject:
Writing Skills
Subject:
Authorship
Subject:
Composition & Creative Writing - General
Subject:
Marketing
Subject:
Authorship -- Marketing.
Publication Date:
March 2007
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
265
Dimensions:
7.92x5.28x.61 in. .46 lbs.

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