Starting from Scratch

From the best-selling author of??Rubyfruit Jungle and??Bingo, here is a writers' manual as provocative,??frank, and funny as her fiction. Unlike most??writers' guides, this one had as much to do with how??writers live as with mastering the tools of their??trade. Rita Mae Brown begins with a very personal??account of her own career, from her days as a young??poet who had written a novel no publisher wanted??to take a chance on, right up to her recent??adventures as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a sassy style??that makes her outspoken advice as entertaining as??it is useful, she provides straight talk about??paying the rent while maintaining the energy to??write; and dealing with agents, publishers, critics,??and the publicity circus; about pursuingj??ournalisim, academia, or screen-writing; and about rejecting??the Hemingway myth of the hard-living,??hard-drinking genius. In addition Brown, a former teacher or??writing, offers a serious examination of the??writer's tool--language, plotting, characters,??symbolism--plus exercises to sharpen the ear for dialogue,??and a fascinating, annoted reading list of??important works from the seventh century to the late??twentieth.

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series; A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day; and Six of One, as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia.