L
Lahiri, Jhumpa
Lang, Susan
Last White Class, The
Lawrence, D. H.
Lee, Tanith
LeGuin
Leguin, Ursula
Lem, Stanislau
Lemus, Felicia
Leo, Joan
leo@fergusrules.com
Lessing, Doris
Lethem, Jonathan
Letts, Billie
Levi, Primo
Le Carre
Little Red Riding Hood
Llosa, Mario Vargas
Lolita
London, Jack
Longings of Women, The
Look at Me
Loosening the Imagination
Lord Jim
Lovely Bones, The
Love In A Time of Cholera
Lycanthia
M
MacDonald, Anne-Marie
Mailer, Norman
Maltese Falcon, The
Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, The
Mammoth Cheese, The
Marathon Man, The
marketing
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
Mason-Dixon
Mastretta, Angeles
Matousek, Mark
McCourt, Frank
McCoy, Maureen
McInerney, Jay
meditation
Memoir
memoir
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Merlin
Metzger, Deena
Midnight Cowboy
minor characters
Mists Of Avalon, The
Mitchell, Lauren Porosoff
Moby Dick
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Monkey Wrench Gang, The
Morris, Willie
Morrison, Toni
Mozart
Mrs. Dalloway
Muhanji, Cherry
multiple submissions
multiple viewpoint
Munro, Alice
Mysteries
mysteries
Mysteries of Pittsburgh
myths
My Year Of Meats
N
Nabokov, Vladimir
Name of the Rose, The
narrator
National Writers Union
Neely, Barbara
New York City Police Department
Nichols, John
O
O’Brien, Edna
Oates, Joyce Carol
Odyssey, The
Of Cats and Men
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You In The Closet And I’m Fellin’ So Sad
Okri, Ben
Olsen, Tillie
Once Upon A Mattress
Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time
One Off the Short List
On Strike Against God
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Out of Africa
over-plotting
Ozeki, Ruth
P
Paine, Thomas
Paley, Grace
Palimpsest
Panza, Sancho
Parker, Robert
Parkhurst, Carolyn
parody
Pelerin, Victor
Pentimento
Piercy, Marge
Pinter, Harold
Play It Again, Sam
plot
plot-driven fiction
Poe, Edgar Allen
Poets & Writers
pop culture
Portnoy‘s Complaint
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Potter, Beatrix
Practical Information
Prejean, Helen
Prep
Price, Richard
Pritchett, V. S.
Proulx, Annie
Publishers Marketing Association
Publishers Weekly
Publish And Perish
Puig, Manuel
Pynchon, Thomas
Q
Quest
questions to ask of your characters
R
Ragtime
Raphael, Lev
reading, importance of
reading, recommended
reading to audiences
recommended books
Redfield, James
Red Tent, The
rejection letters
Report to the Authors Guild Midlist Book Study Committee
Research
research
Rombauer, Irma
Rookie Cop
Rosenthal, Richard
Ross, Lillian
Roszak, Theodore
Roth, Philip
Runyon, Damon
Russ, Joanna
S
“Summer Encounter”
Salinger, J. D.
Samsa, Gregor
Sandberg, Carl
Saramago, Jose
Sarton, May
SASE
Sayers, Dorothy
Scarlet Letter, The
science fiction
Scorcese, Martin
Sebold, Alice
Sedaris, David
See Under Love
self-hatred
Self-publishing
sensory details
Seven Long Times
sex scenes
Shadow Man, The
Shadow Theater
shame
Shaw, George Bernard
Sheldon, Sidney
Sherlock Holmes
Sholem, Gershom
Shoot The Moon
Sinclair, Upton
Single & Single
Sister Age
Sleeping with Cats
Small Changes
Small Rocks Rising
Snowblind
Solaris
Soon to be a Major Motion Picture
Speak, Memory
Speer, Laurel
Spiderman
Stalin In The Bronx
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Steele, Danielle
Stein, Gertrude
Stern
Storm Tide
Story of My Life
Superman
Surfacing
T
tags, importance of
Talking To The Dead
Tangherlini, Arne
Taylor, Kressman
Tender is the Night
Tender is the night
Terkel, Studs
Them
The Country Husband
The Crystal Crypt
The Gernsback Continuum
The Lottery
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
The Woman Who Slept with Men To Take the War Out of Them
Thomas, Piri
Thompson, Hunter S.
Thoreau, Henry David
Three Penny Opera, The
Three Women
Time’s Winged Chariot
Tinker Bell
Tiptree, Jr., James
Tolstoy, Leo
To Say Nothing Of The Dog
To Say Nothing of the Dog
To The Lighthouse
transparent narrator
Traven, B.
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The
Trial, The
Tristan & Isolde
Tuesdays With Morrie
Twain, Mark
Tyler, Anne
U
Up The Walls of The World
USA trilogy
Utopian fiction
V
vanity publishing
Vidal, Gore
viewpoint
voice
Voltaire
Vonnegut, Kurt
W
Waiting for Elvis
Wallace, David Foster
Walters, Barbara
Wanderers, The
War At Home, The
War of The End of The World, The
Watson, Dr.
Waugh, Evelyn
Way The Crow Flies, The
Whedon, Josh
Whitman, Walt
Willis, Connie
Winterson, Jeanette
Wolfe, Tom
Woman on the Edge of Time
Women With Big Eyes
Wood, Ira
Woods, Teri
Woolf, Virginia
Wretched of The Earth, The
writers groups
Y
Yurick, Sol
Z
Zola, Emile
Acknowledgments of Excerpts
Used in the Text by Page Number
Page 29 from Look At Me by Lauren Porosoff Mitchell. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 2000. © 2000 by Lauren Porosoff Mitchell.
Page 30, from Storm Tide by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood. New York: Fawcett/Ballantine, 1998. © 1998 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 33 from He, She and It by Marge Piercy. New York: Fawcett/ Ballantine, 1993. © 1991 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 34 from Gone To Soldiers by Marge Piercy. New York: Fawcett/ Ballantine,1988. © 1987 Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 35 from The Kitchen Man by Ira Wood. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 1998. © 1986 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 38 from Rookie Cop by Richard Rosenthal. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 2000. © 1999 by Richard Rosenthal.
Page 40 from Sleeping With Cats by Marge Piercy. New York: William Morrow & Company, 2002. © 2001 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 53 from Junebug by Maureen McCoy. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 2004. © 2004 by Maureen McCoy
Page 81 from Storm Tide by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood. New York: Fawcett/Ballantine, 1998. © 1998 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 84 from Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. New York: Fawcett/Ballantine, 1997. © 1986 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 87 from Three Women by Marge Piercy. New York: William Morrow, 1999; Harper/Torch, 2000. © 1999, by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 89 from Three Women by Marge Piercy. New York: William Morrow, 1999; Harper/Torch, 2000. © 1999, by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 90 from Waiting for Elvis by Toni Graham. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 2005. © 2005 by Toni Graham.
Page 101 from “Thoughts on Adult Education Many Years Later: The Afterword to the 20th Anniversary Edition,” Adult Education by Annette Williams Jaffee. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 2000. © 1981 by Annette Williams Jaffee.
Page 135 from Look At Me by Lauren Porosoff Mitchell. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 2000. © 2000 by Lauren Porosoff Mitchell.
Page 141 from Small Changes by Marge Piercy. New York: Fawcett/ Ballantine, 1997. © 1986 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 142 from City of Darkness, City of Light by Marge Piercy. New York: Fawcett/Ballantine, 1996. © 1996 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 143 from The Kitchen Man by Ira Wood. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 1998. © 1986 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 144 from Storm Tide by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood. New York: Fawcett/Ballantine, 1998. © 1998 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 146 from City of Darkness, City of Light by Marge Piercy. New York: Fawcett/Ballantine, 1996. © 1996 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 147 from Three Women by Marge Piercy. New York: William Morrow, 1999; Harper/Torch, 2000. © 1999, by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 148 from leo@fergusrules.com by Arne Tangherlini. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 1999. © 1999 by Gina Apostol-Tangherlini.
Page 165 from He, She and It by Marge Piercy. New York: Fawcett/ Ballantine, 1993. © 1991 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 205 from The Kitchen Man by Ira Wood. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 1998.© 1986 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
Page 207 from The Devil and Daniel Silverman by Theodore Roszak. Wellfleet: Leapfrog Press, 2003.© 2003 by Theodore Roszak.
Page 211-13 from The Kitchen Man by Ira Wood. Wellfleet: Leapfrog-Press, 1998.© 1986 by Middlemarsh, Inc.
A Note About The Authors
Marge Piercy is the author of seventeen novels including The New York Times bestseller Gone To Soldiers; the national bestseller, The Longings of Women and the classic, Woman on the Edge of Time; sixteen volumes of poetry, and a critically acclaimed memoir, Sleeping with Cats. The compact disk recording of her political poems, LOUDER: We Can’t Hear You Yet! was named the Best Poetry AudioBook of the Year by Library Journal. Born in center city Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan, the recipient of four honorary doctorates, she has been a key player in many of the major progressive movements of our time, including civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, feminism, and the resistance to the war in Iraq. A popular speaker on college campuses, she has been a featured guest on Bill Moyers’ PBS Specials, Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, Terri Gross’s Fresh Air, the Today Show, and many radio programs nationwide. Praised as one of the few American writers who is an accomplished poet as well as a novelist, she is also the master of many genres: historical novels, science fiction (for which she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the Best Science Fiction Novel in the United Kingdom), novels of social comment and contemporary entertainments. She has taught, lectured and/or performed her work at more than 400 universities around the world. A great deal of information about Marge Piercy is available on her website, www.margepiercy.com.
Ira Wood is the author of two novels, The Kitchen Man and Going Public, and the co-author (with Marge Piercy) of the erotic thriller, Storm Tide. He has crafted stage plays and interactive fiction for children, as well as screenplays. Ira’s work emphasizes humor, autobiographical material and the family. He and Piercy travel all over the country to give workshops in fiction and the personal narrative, which stress the importance of the writer’s craft and overcoming the inner and outer barriers to creativity. In 1996, he and Piercy created Leapfrog Press, a small publishing company specializing in poetry, memoir and literary fiction. Find out more about Leapfrog at www.leapfrogpress.com.
ABOUT THE TYPE
This book was set in Garamond, a typeface based on the types of the sixteenth-century printer, publisher, and type designer Claude Garamond, whose sixteenth-century types were modeled on those of Venetian printers from the end of the previous century. The italics are based on types by Robert Granjon, a contemporary of Garamond’s. The Garamond typeface and its variations have been a standard among book designers and printers for four centuries.
Composed by JTC Imagineering, Santa Maria,CA
Designed by John Taylor-Convery
Are you ready to take the next step and get feedback on your work?
Are you ready to sign up for a workshop?
You can learn a great deal from this book but nothing replaces the feedback you can take away from a writing class; not only from the comments of experienced working writers and teachers; not only from the observations of other writers in the class; but from the editor inside yourself. Sharing your writing with other serious writers, and at the same time hearing others’ work, enables you to judge whether your intentions are successful or if they fall short. And if they fall short, why? What can you do about it? How can you change it to make it work?
Moreover, a workshop, like a publication deadline, requires that you actually finish something to share rather than simply thinking about it.
A workshop is a risk, no doubt about it. It may shake your illusions or your complacency. You might discover that not all, but certain parts of your project are weak; or that the work is actually very good and speaks to others. You may decide that it is time to revise your work with the aim of submitting it for publication.
Ultimately the decision rests upon how serious you are about your writing. Are you ready to take the next step and get feedback on your work? Are you ready to sign up for a workshop?
Find the complete schedule of the So You Want to Write Workshops, as well as a detailed description at www.margepiercy.com or www.irawood.com.
1 From Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy, Published by Alfred A. Knopf, NY 1982. © 1982 by Marge Piercy
This Edition 2010
Copyright © 2001
by Middlemarsh, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Originally Published in 2001 in the United States by
The Leapfrog Press
P.O. Box 1495 95 Commercial Street
Wellfleet, MA 02667-1495, USA
www.leapfrogpress.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada by
Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
St. Paul, Minnesota 55114
Piercy, Marge.
So you want to write: how to master the craft of fiction and the per-
sonal narrative / by
Marge Piercy & Ira Wood.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN : 978-0-979-64152-7
1. Fiction—Authorship. 2. Autobiography—Authorship. I. Wood, Ira.
II. Title.
PN3355 .P54 2001
808.3—dc21
00-069009