Write Now, Here's How: Insights from six decades of writing - Paperback

by Linda M. Hasselstrom (Author), James W. Parker (Designed by)

In Write Now, Here's How, a dedicated and experienced writer leads you through forty entertaining essays that define six decades of writing challenges. You'll feel as if you are conversing with author Linda M. Hasselstrom about how her challenging life on a working cattle ranch in the shortgrass prairie of Western South Dakota became material for seventeen books. Reading this book is like joining Hasselstrom in the quiet privacy of the retreat house, where dozens of writers have found their voices.

You'll learn what flesh-eating bacteria and snort-able chocolate have to do with reflections on writing. Is it possible to find inspiration neck-deep in hot water in a claw-foot tub?

With Hasselstrom's guidance, your writing will grow like a tulip, and bloom like wild pink roses along a dusty gravel road. Winston Churchill will teach you about persistence. Walking will become a vital part of your writing practice.

What is the most efficient way to monitor your valuable writing time? You'll find answers here. How can you most efficiently organize your writing space-no matter how small? How can you fit serious writing into a life filled with work, family, and entertainment? Hasselstrom presents a variety of possibilities to help you choose a schedule that best suits you.

Other topics will catch your attention as well. Why is the top of the refrigerator a useful writing metaphor? Hasselstrom will answer this question, and send you scrambling to your kitchen with a notebook.

And Hasselstrom doesn't just explain; she demonstrates with examples from her own work how writers can begin to see the invisible. She gently leads you into meditations that will help you create a writing retreat in any busy week. With this perceptive woman, you will explore methods of defining the memoir that will become an important part of your writing.

As you read her discussion about how much truth belongs in your nonfiction, you'll feel as though you were sharing coffee at the retreat house table, or strolling a trail filled with opportunity. What can Lovers' Leap teach you about discipline? What's the truth-and the risks-that accompany the Bogus Jim burl failure?

Besides exploring options for writing ideas and directions, you'll discover practical information. What should every writer know about copyright? How do you interpret decipher the complex language of publishing contracts?

And what about the Internal Revenue Service? Study Hasselstrom's analysis of her experiences with this august body, and learn how to protect yourself.

Do you begin each allotment of your writing time with a specific objective that you know you can reach? If not, Hasselstrom will help you realize how important it is for you to organize your writing aspirations into specific goals.

A writer's best friend might be an editor-but not always. Do you need an agent? Probably not, and Hasselstrom will help you understand why this is true. She even asks important questions about how you might promote your book and what the results might be. Will you get a movie offer or a Pulitzer Prize? Reading this book can provide a significant and compelling answer.

Linda M. Hasselstrom is an award-winning poet and writer of the High Plains whose work is rooted in the arid landscape of her southwestern South Dakota ranch; she holds degrees from the University of South Dakota and University of Missouri. Author of seventeen books of nonfiction and poetry, she has conducted hundreds of readings, workshops, talks and lectures about writing and publishing for audiences ranging from elementary students to senior citizens. She is the resident writer and instructor at Windbreak House, established as a retreat in 1996.