Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings [Paperback]

‘For anyone getting going as a writer (and even for those who have already made a start), this is an invaluable how-to guide, full of useful tips, mind-freeing exercises, and inspiring wisdom from established authors. A book to banish the terror of the blank page.’ – Blake Morrison, journalist, critic and acclaimed author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, including the multi-award-winning And When Did You Last See Your Father? (Granta, 1993)

Creative Writing is a complete writing course that will jump-start your writing and guide you through your first steps towards publication.

Suitable for use by students, tutors, writers’ groups or writers working alone, this book offers:

• a practical and inspiring section on the creative process, showing you how to stimulate your creativity and use your memory and experience in inventive ways
• in-depth coverage of the most popular forms of writing, in extended sections on fiction, poetry and life writing, including biography and autobiography, giving you practice in all three forms so that you might discover and develop your particular strengths
• a sensible, up-to-date guide to going public, to help you to edit your work to a professional standard and to identify and approach suitable publishers
• a distinctive collection of exciting exercises, spread throughout the workbook to spark your imagination and increase your technical flexibility and control
• a substantial array of illuminating readings, bringing together extracts from contemporary and classic writings in order to demonstrate a range of techniques that you can use or adapt in your own work.

Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings presents a unique opportunity to benefit from the advice and experience of a team of published authors who have also taught successful writing courses at a wide range of institutions, helping large numbers of new writers to develop their talents as well as their abilities to evaluate and polish their work to professional standards. These institutions include Lancaster University and the University of East Anglia, renowned as consistent producers of published writers.

Linda Anderson is an award-winning novelist (To Stay Alive and Cuckoo, both published by Bodley Head) and writer of short stories, poetry, performance pieces, and critical reviews. Her work has been published in Britain, Ireland, the USA, and Australia. She has taught at Goldsmiths' College and at Lancaster University for ten years, becoming Head of Creative Writing from 1995-2002. She has designed several successful courses including a training programme for new writing tutors and an MA in Creative Writing by distance learning. She has also worked as a producer and director for BBC Radio Drama. She has a PhD in Creative Writing.