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Common Knowledge

Legal name: Burack, Sylvia E. Kamerman
Other names: Kamerman, Sylvia E.
Birthdate: 1917-12-16
Date of death: 2003-02-14
Gender: female
Education: Smith College (1938)
Occupations: editor
publisher
author
magazine publisher
university trustee
Relationships: Burack, A. S. (husband)
Short biography: Sylvia K. Burack, née Kamerman, was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She graduated from Smith College in 1938. For nearly 40 years, she and her husband A.S. Burack published The Writer, as well as another magazine called Plays, and books on writing. The Writer, established in 1887, was among the oldest continuously published consumer magazines in the USA. It aimed to teach aspiring writers the mechanics of good writing and offer advice on how to get published, and featured such contributors as John Updike, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Phyllis A. Whitney. After Mr. Burack's death in 1978, Sylvia took over as editor and publisher. In addition, she was the author of her own advice books about writing, some published under her birth name, including Writing and Selling the Romance Novel (1983), Writing Mystery and Crime Fiction (1985), How to Write and Sell Mystery Fiction (1990), How to Write and Sell Your Articles (1997), Writing for Children and Young Adults (2000), and the annual The Writer's Handbook. She also edited numerous collections of plays for children such as The Big Book of Holiday Plays (1990) and The Big Book of Skits (1996). She served as a trustee for the Massachusetts state college system and the University of Massachusetts, and was president of the Friends of Boston University Libraries. She retired in 2000 and sold the The Writer to the Kalmbach Publishing Co.
Nationality: USA
Birthplace: Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Places of residence: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Associated Place (for map): Massachusetts, USA

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8 reviews

Anna_Erishkigal 131 reviews

The Writer's Handbook by Sylvia K. Burack

A collection of short pieces culled from 'The Writer' magazine, this is probably the best source of truly helpful and inspirational pieces of advice about how to move your story from campy idea taking up real estate inside your brain, onto the written page, and then transformed into something an editor might actually want to publish.

Is this a 'how to' manual? No. If you want an A-B-C guide on how to write Book 101, I suggest you go to other sources. This book largely assumes you have already show more mastered the basic mechanics of writing short stories, novels or non-fiction and are now looking for ways to take that outline you sketched out on a paper napkin at the bar last night and transform it into a novel people might actually buy. Instead, it metes out advice from a broad field of established authors on a variety of subjects such as plot, character, dialogue, and background and create (or edit) your idea into something that transcends the ordinary and makes others stand up and take notice. If you've ever wondered about the thought-process of a competent writer who can grab you by the bootstraps and drag you along for the ride, HOW they make their stories so compelling, this is the place to catch glimpses of the light they see.

In my case, after having tackled my first 'fiction' novel (having already self-published a successful non-fiction work), I found it extremely useful for the job I picked up the book at an estate sale of a local author to do in the first place. Do a final edit of my 6-novel fantasy series and improve them before sending the first one off on the long, lonely road of shopping for a publisher.

This book is updated every year with new material added, while old articles are culled out. I possess both the 1970 edition as well as this one and approximately 60% of the reading matter has changed, both sets of articles being equally delightful and helpful. I have created my own 'edit checklist' from the two combined books and use the techniques outlined in this book to do a lot of what a professional editor would do. Cull out irrelevancies. Check for plot bunnies. Ensure the pacing doesn't lag. Make my scenes and characters more vivid. Make sure my characters remain 'true' to the identities I have created for them.

To get this checklist, I read the various articles in two editions, culled out passages I found particularly vivid, and made the checklist myself. As I stated earlier, this is not 'Writing 101.' After an appropriate period of 'set aside,' I go back through my novels, chapter by chapter, and use the checklist to clean things up and make them better. My only criticism of this book is that I wish they had broken down the articles more by sub-topic (plot, pacing, background, etc) so I didn't have to make my list, which is kind of my own 'chapter summary.'

Since I cheaped out and bought the older edition(s) of this book, I found the resource chapters to be out of date. My understanding of the profession is that e-publishing and Amazon.com have so decimated the big publishing houses that the landscape of names to send books to is changing on an almost daily basis. By the time lists are even published, many of the resources will already be out of date. The last 'quarter' of the older editions of this book are largely now irrelevant. That being said, the value of the first three-quarters more than makes up for the few dollars I paid to buy both editions used. show less

Mar 30, 20131 other review

Ranjr 260 reviews

The Writer's Handbook by Sylvia K. Burack

This book was interesting in that it had most of the typical recommendations for writers-type advice you see in current writing blogs. However, it also had some sage advice in certain areas you don't (at least I don't) hear so often. In particular, I would point you to Chapters 2, 4, 6, 8, 13, 14, 17, 21, 28, 29, 31, 33-35, 40, and the intro to Chapter 61: Notes on Playwriting was entertaining. There are few chapters that may interesting to those wishing to know a little more of the show more editorial side of the late pulp era though those references are sparse. However Chapter 51: The Way of a Pulp Writer might be of interest.
The book is divided into two parts the first being the reprint of writer and editorial advice columns from various magazines of the day. The second part is just an extended list of the submission markets at the time and was wholly uninteresting to me. If you're going to read this book read it for the first section.
For a book published in 1957 there are some things in it that are somewhat non-PC but not much at all save for 50's style references to women and men and their differences/preferences but Chapter 75: The Church is my Favorite Beat has some cringe-worthy lines in it. If you're looking for controversy it'll be in that single chapter.
With this book, I found myself enjoying the earlier chapters more (there are a total of 79 chapters/articles) and the focus of those chapters on characters and characterization. Frankly, if you can get a copy of this book for cheap, by all means, get it and read it there are things of interest here. show less

Jul 13, 2023 (Edited)1 other review

katieloucks 617 reviews

The Big Book of Skits: 36 Short Plays for Young Actors by Sylvia E. Kamerman