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Loading... How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and…by Ariel Gore
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Fun & informative guide to writing, with a focus on getting your work published ASAP. (  ) monzrocks | Jan 6, 2009 |  The advice in this book is by no means earth-shattering. You'll recognize most of it from other writing guides. Example: Want to be a writer? Then write. (Sure sounds simple, but I have yet to develop a habit of writing every day.) But unlike most other writing guides, this book will keep you laughing while it injects you with a good dose of writing wisdom. This book also has some great ideas for exercises—for example, go through a piece you wrote and remove all adjectives and adverbs, rewriting where necessary. Gore includes several interviews with literary stars, some more interesting than others. One of my favorite interviews was with Ursula K. Le Guin: "Stories are like feral kittens. You have to be very patient and careful and quiet and put out little bits of chicken on the floor." The chapters in this book are fairly short and the advice is so fun to read that I'm going to get a copy of this to own. ( ) snozzberry | Nov 2, 2008 | It's sort of embarrassing to be caught reading this book, because of the title. Or I felt that way, anyhow. But I'm owning up to it here. It filled me with a kind of firey energy for both producing writing and getting it out into the world. In that sense, it was very useful. It's pragmatic and doesn't really romanticize "the writing life." I liked that. I also liked that it discussed both how to get published and also self-publishing of various forms. ( ) heavyleg | May 6, 2008 | This is an ultra-readable book on writing, refreshingly devoid of pretense and overblown statements about the writer's "craft". Ariel Gore comes from the "punk rock" school of writing and is the queen of DIY authorship. Her successful zine "Hip Mama" has spun off into the more widely published "Hip Mama Survival Guide". Her insights are from the experience of a busy single mom with a passion for putting words to paper. Gore's take on writing boils down to (1) If you write, then you are a writer. And to be a writer, you must write. Publication is optional. But, (2) people need to see what you've written. Shameless self-promotion is part of being successful as a lit-star. Gore includes interviews with other successful authors from a variety of genres (Ursula LeGuin, Dave Eggers, Margaret Cho, and Michelle Tea, for example). These authors provide helpful insights on the discipline and motivation needed to become successful. The book is less a "how-to" than a kick in the pants to get out there and go. It succeeds in giving a writer the psychological impetus to continue. Writing is what's important. So is rewriting. Getting words down. Now, print it in a zine. Publish it online. Print it on a flue and hand them out. Do it. This book really spoke to me on a personal level about my own endeavors at writing. I had checked the book out from my local library, but loved it so much I had to go out and buy it. Talent isn't enough, and neither is passion. Motivation is all-important. You sometimes need another writer to come in say "You are a writer. Write!". Thanks, Ariel, for the kick in the pants. ( ) bermanesque | May 1, 2008 | The title says it all: How To Become A Famous Writer Before You're Dead. Ariel Gore knows something about making oneself famous. She has published memoirs, novels, anthologies, and zines. She has become one of the media go-to sources on single motherhood (check out her parenting zine/site Hip Mama). And she has a lot of good advice for the writer who wants to get noticed. Gore comes from the hippie/punk/zine D.I.Y. strain of American culture. She advises wannabe lit stars to write all the time, publish all the time, make connections, promote yourself, be your own publicist, fight for your time, and stand in the street in a pink tutu if that's the only way to make people show up at the reading. I say: Excellent advice. A lot of writers (myself included) are naturally shy and would like our work to become famous without us. This is unlikely to happen. Literary history is full of shameless self-promoters, from Whitman and Twain to Ginsberg. In fifty years, no one remembers the press push, but your fabulous book/play/poetry tome may vanish into the void without it. subbobmail | Mar 29, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)
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