Still Writing


Book Description

This national bestseller from celebrated novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro is an intimate and eloquent companion to living a creative life. Through a blend of memoir, meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Shapiro offers her gift to writers everywhere: a guide of hard-won wisdom and advice for staying the course. In the ten years since the first edition, Still Writing has become a mainstay of creative writing classes as well as a lodestar for writers just starting out, and above all, an indispensable almanac for modern writers.




Scratch


Book Description

A collection of essays from today’s most acclaimed authors—from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen—on the realities of making a living in the writing world. In the literary world, the debate around writing and commerce often begs us to take sides: either writers should be paid for everything they do or writers should just pay their dues and count themselves lucky to be published. You should never quit your day job, but your ultimate goal should be to quit your day job. It’s an endless, confusing, and often controversial conversation that, despite our bare-it-all culture, still remains taboo. In Scratch, Manjula Martin has gathered interviews and essays from established and rising authors to confront the age-old question: how do creative people make money? As contributors including Jonathan Franzen, Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Nick Hornby, Susan Orlean, Alexander Chee, Daniel Jose Older, Jennifer Weiner, and Yiyun Li candidly and emotionally discuss money, MFA programs, teaching fellowships, finally getting published, and what success really means to them, Scratch honestly addresses the tensions between writing and money, work and life, literature and commerce. The result is an entertaining and inspiring book that helps readers and writers understand what it’s really like to make art in a world that runs on money—and why it matters. Essential reading for aspiring and experienced writers, and for anyone interested in the future of literature, Scratch is the perfect bookshelf companion to On Writing, Never Can Say Goodbye, and MFA vs. NYC.




Devotion


Book Description

In her midforties and settled into the responsibilities and routines of adulthood, Dani Shapiro found herself with more questions than answers. Was this all life was—a hodgepodge of errands, dinner dates, e-mails, meetings, to-do lists? What did it all mean? Having grown up in a deeply religious and traditional family, Shapiro had no personal sense of faith, despite repeated attempts to create a connection to something greater. Feeling as if she was plunging headlong into what Carl Jung termed "the afternoon of life," she wrestled with self-doubt and a searing disquietude that would awaken her in the middle of the night. Set adrift by loss—her father's early death; the life-threatening illness of her infant son; her troubled relationship with her mother—she had become edgy and uncertain. At the heart of this anxiety, she realized, was a challenge: What did she believe? Spurred on by the big questions her young son began to raise, Shapiro embarked upon a surprisingly joyful quest to find meaning in a constantly changing world. The result is Devotion: a literary excavation to the core of a life. In this spiritual detective story, Shapiro explores the varieties of experience she has pursued—from the rituals of her black hat Orthodox Jewish relatives to yoga shalas and meditation retreats. A reckoning of the choices she has made and the knowledge she has gained, Devotion is the story of a woman whose search for meaning ultimately leads her home. Her journey is at once poignant and funny, intensely personal—and completely universal.




God is Writing Your Story


Book Description

Jesus"€"the consummate author"€"is writing a story with your life. He loves a good plot and He rarely writes short stories. Take heart in the journey, your last chapter's not yet written. This book will inspire you by telling one of the Bible's greatest stories from a perspective rarely seen. Be encouraged"€"God is using the unique twists of your journey to craft a story with your life. When the journey grows long, we can be tempted to lose heart. This book will strengthen you to stay in the story. In the last section of the book, you will be encouraged by one of the greatest"€"and least told"€"stories in the entire Bible. We think you'll agree that this is one of Bob's most important books.




Account-Based Marketing For Dummies


Book Description

Grow your account list with an effective account-based marketing strategy Buyers have changed the B2B marketing game. Account-Based Marketing For Dummies is here to give you the tools to transform your current approach to find, reach, and engage with your potential customers on their terms to meet their ever-changing demands. Packed with expert tips and step-by-step instructions, this book shows you how to analyze current data to identify the accounts with the biggest ROI opportunities and execute effective, account-specific techniques that get results. This practical guide takes the intimidation out of account-based marketing in today's highly digitized world. You'll be armed with the knowledge you need to increase your reach in real time, giving you greater exposure to other decision-makers and influencers within an account. You'll discover how, through a combination of marketing technology and online advertising, your messages can be displayed where and when your customers already engage online. Align your sales and marketing teams for greater success in your ABM efforts Analyze data to identify key accounts Target your messages for real-time interaction Integrate your campaign with marketing automation software If you're a member of a sales or marketing team already using a CRM tool who's looking to increase your reach, Account-Based Marketing For Dummies has you covered! "Account-Based Marketing For Dummies clears away the confusion surrounding this much-hyped topic. It offers simple, direct explanations of what account-based marketing is, why it's important, and how to do it. Any business marketing professional will benefit from a look at this book." —David Raab, Founder at Raab Associates "If you're reading this book and just getting started with ABM, welcome to the future of what b-to-b marketing can be: insight-led, technology-enabled and, above all, customer focused. Our clients are delighted with the business impact they deliver using account-based marketing, and you will be, too." —Megan Heuer, Vice President and Group Director, SiriusDecisions "Like a Hollywood agent, marketing's job is to get sales the 'audition,' not the part. Account-based marketing is the key to maximizing the number of the 'right' auditions for your sales team, and Account-Based Marketing For Dummies explains how." —Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing at InsightSquared "Ever-advancing marketing technology is enabling a new generation of sales and marketing strategies to thrive, changing the playing field for companies of all sizes. This modern wave of account-based marketing has tremendous potential to improve your business, and Sangram Vajre is an insightful and enthusiastic guide to show you how." —Scott Brinker, Author of Hacking Marketing "Account-based marketing is shifting how businesses use customer insights to capture more upmarket revenue. This book teaches a new wave of data-driven marketers how to embrace an enlightened quality-vs-quantity approach and execute a scalable ABM strategy that delivers real results." —Sean Zinsmeister, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Infer "The book may be titled '…for dummies', but ABM is proving to be a smart approach for B2B marketers charged with generating sales pipeline and acquiring and delighting customers. Use this book to help you get started and advance your account-based marketing strategies and tactics that will thrill your sales colleagues, executive team and customers alike." —Scott Vaughan, CMO, Integrate




Designing Data-Intensive Applications


Book Description

Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including relational databases, NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. What are the right choices for your application? How do you make sense of all these buzzwords? In this practical and comprehensive guide, author Martin Kleppmann helps you navigate this diverse landscape by examining the pros and cons of various technologies for processing and storing data. Software keeps changing, but the fundamental principles remain the same. With this book, software engineers and architects will learn how to apply those ideas in practice, and how to make full use of data in modern applications. Peer under the hood of the systems you already use, and learn how to use and operate them more effectively Make informed decisions by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of different tools Navigate the trade-offs around consistency, scalability, fault tolerance, and complexity Understand the distributed systems research upon which modern databases are built Peek behind the scenes of major online services, and learn from their architectures




Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?


Book Description

This book explores the effectiveness of the workshop in the Creative Writing classroom, and looks beyond the question of whether or not the workshop works to address the issue of what an altered pedagogical model might look like. In visualising what else is possible in the workshop space, the sixteen chapters collected in ‘Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?’ cover a range of theoretical and pedagogical topics and explore the inner workings and conflicts of the workshop model. The needs of a growing and diverse student population are central to the chapter authors’ consideration of non-normative pedagogies. The book is a must-read for all teachers of Creative Writing, as well as for researchers in Creative Writing Studies.




Why Writing Still Matters


Book Description

In an age of new media, with its concerns about fake news and misinformation, this fascinating book provides a clearly articulated rationale for why writing matters – now, more than ever before. It will delight and inspire undergraduates and general readers with its carefully considered and richly illustrated treatment of writing.




Writing Still - New stories from Zimbabwe


Book Description

The history of Zimbabwe has always been reflected in its oral and written literature. Much of the serious fiction written in the 1980s and early 1990s focused on the effects of Zimbabwe?s war of liberation. Little has yet been written about post-independence Zimbabwe and the complex and challenging issues that have arisen in the last twenty years. This anthology of twenty-two short stories provides a representative sample of the range and quality of writing in Zimbabwe at the turn of the century, and an impressionistic reflection of the years since independence in 1980. Included are stories by established writers Shimmer Chinodya, Charles Mungoshi, Brian Chikwava; and some younger or less established writers, , Clement Chihota, Wonder Guchu, Chiedza Musengezi, Mary Ndlovu, Vivienne Ndlovu and Stanley Nyamfukudza. The collection also reflects a slightly broader perspective with stories by Alexandra Fuller, Derek Huggins, Pat Brickhill and Chris Wilson, who engage with historical memory of the conflicts out of which Zimbabwe arose, and the lessons to be drawn from living within a culture other than one?s own. Overall, the anthology reaffirms the persistent value attached to imaginative writing in Zimbabwe, and illustrates that the country?s literary tradition is alive and well, and reshaping itself for new times.




The Anthropocene Reviewed


Book Description

Goodreads Choice winner for Nonfiction 2021 and instant #1 bestseller! A deeply moving collection of personal essays from John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. “The perfect book for right now.” –People “The Anthropocene Reviewed is essential to the human conversation.” –Library Journal, starred review The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale—from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar. Funny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity. As a species, we are both far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough, a paradox that came into sharp focus as we faced a global pandemic that both separated us and bound us together. John Green’s gift for storytelling shines throughout this masterful collection. The Anthropocene Reviewed is an open-hearted exploration of the paths we forge and an unironic celebration of falling in love with the world.