Now Write Fiction Writing Exercises From Today’s Best Writers and Teachers By: Steve Almond, Robert Olen Butler, Amy Bloom, Jill McCorkle, Alison Lurie, Jayne Anna Phillips, Virgil Suarez, and more! Edited by: Sherry Ellis

Summary A collection of personal writing exercises from some of today’s most celebrated novelists, short story writers, and writing teachers, including Jill McCorkle, Amy Bloom, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Almond, Jayne Anna Phillips and Virgil Suarez. What’s the secret behind the successful and prolific careers of critically acclaimed, award- winning novelists and short story writers?

Summary Cont. Divine assistance? Otherworldly talent? While the rest of us are struggling to come up with a first sentence, these writers are busy wrapping up story after story and novel after novel. Despite producing work that may seem effortless, all of them have a simple technique for fending off writer’s block: the writing exercise.

Summary Cont. In Now Write!, Sherry Ellis collects the personal writing exercises of today’s most acclaimed fiction writers and lays bare the secrets of their success.

Summary Cont. *In “The Photograph,” Jill McCorkle divulges her tactics for taming an overload plot. *National Book Award nominee Amy Bloom offers “Water Buddies,” an exercise for writers working in groups. *Steve Almond provides a lesson in avoiding purple prose in “The Five-Second Shortcut to Writing in the Lyric Register.” *Pultizer Prize nominee Kathleen Spivack serves up a program for better self-discipline in “The Writing Excerise: A Recipe.”

Eighty-seven of the country’s top writers present fresh, fun, practical exercises for creating a scene, fine-tuning a voice, jump-starting a stalled story, and more. Introduced by the authors themselves, the exercises in Now Write! are concise and accessible, lending themselves to immediate use. By providing the proven techniques of National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, and Guggenheim Fellowship winners, Now Write! encourages the aspiring writer to write now!