Introduction

Part 1: The creative process

1: Stimulating creativity and imagination

2: Writing what you know

3: Writing what you come to know

Part 2: Writing fiction

4: Character

5: Setting

6: Point of view

7: Showing and telling

8: Structure and time

9: The story and your readers

10: Editing fiction

Part 3: Writing poetry

11: Introduction to poetry

12: Voice and language

13: Poetic structure

14: Rhyme and metre

15: Revising poetry

Part 4: Life writing

16: Starting out

17: Finding a form

18: Using memory

19: Versions of a life

20: Life characters

Part 5: Going public

21: Going public

22: Presenting your work

READINGS

Part 1: The creative process

1.1 from `Fires´

1.2 from `A Real-life Education´

2.1 `Death of a Naturalist´

2.2 from `Netherley´

2.3 from `Tomorrow is Too Far´

2.4 `Memory: The True Key to Real Imagining´

3.1`The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team´

3.2 from Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out

Part 2: Writing fiction

4.1 from `A Sheltered Woman´

5.1 from `The Edge of the Shoal´

6.1 `First Journeyman´

6.2 `Becky Finch´

6.3 `Love Silk Food´

7.1 `Going the Last Inch: Some Thoughts on Showing and Telling´

7.2 `The Dream´

7.3 `Moonlight´

7.4 from `Freddy Barrandov Checks ... in?´

7.5 from `Byron Francis´

7.6 `I Could See the Smallest Things´

7.7 `Tomorrow is Too Far´

8.1 from The Art of Writing Fiction

8.2 `Pigeons at Daybreak´

9.1 `Bodies´

9.2 `Tattoo´

10.1 `Through a Tangle of Branches: Reworking the Poem´

10.2 from `Putting Coyolxauhqui Together: A Creative Process´

10.3 from `Redrafting and Editing´

10.4 from Steering the Craft

Part 4: Life writing

16.1 from Long Time No See

16.2 from `Little Boxes´

17.1 from The Haunting of Alma Fielding

17.2 `Red Riviera´

17. 3 `Well done, No. 3777!´

18.1 from Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir

18.2 from Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging

18.3 from Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging

19.1 from The Diary of a Young Girl

19.2 `Darkness and Light´

19.3 from Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer

19.4 from `Time Travel on the St. Lawrence River´

20.1 from Bad Blood

20.2 from Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star

20.3 from Foreigners: Three English Lives

Part 5: Going public

21.1 from Tips From a Publisher

21.2 `Considering Self-Publishing: A Guide´

22.1 Synopsis for Dark Aemilia

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Index