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Mugging the Muse: Writing Fiction for Love and Money
Want to Get PAID for Writing What You LOVE?
In this collection of thirty-one essays, workshops, quizzes, Q&As, and how-to-do-it articles, novelist Holly Lisle — who went pro with her award-winning first novel, Fire in the Mist, in 1992 and who’s been writing full-time ever since (more than thirty novels published by major publishers, and still writing) offers help, comfort, and wry practical advice to the beginning fiction writer looking for answers.
In the second edition of this book, Holly walks writers through Preparation, Practice, Writing & Selling, and Frequently Asked Questions, offering end-of-chapter exercises, workshops, and free downloadable worksheets designed to get the individual writer or members of writers’ groups working productively with publication as the goal.
In this newly updated writing course, you will discover:
Why you want to write...
What you want to write...
Who you want to write for...
How to write only what you love and what matters to YOU...
How to make your work good...
And how to get paid for doing it.
Writing is a learnable skill, not a magical process only those
touched by the Book Fairy, or the Muse, can ever reach.
If you want to write fiction, you can.
In this collection of thirty-one essays, workshops, quizzes, Q&As, and how-to-do-it articles, novelist Holly Lisle — who went pro with her award-winning first novel, Fire in the Mist, in 1992 and who’s been writing full-time ever since (more than thirty novels published by major publishers, and still writing) offers help, comfort, and wry practical advice to the beginning fiction writer looking for answers.
In the second edition of this book, Holly walks writers through Preparation, Practice, Writing & Selling, and Frequently Asked Questions, offering end-of-chapter exercises, workshops, and free downloadable worksheets designed to get the individual writer or members of writers’ groups working productively with publication as the goal.
In this newly updated writing course, you will discover:
Why you want to write...
What you want to write...
Who you want to write for...
How to write only what you love and what matters to YOU...
How to make your work good...
And how to get paid for doing it.
Writing is a learnable skill, not a magical process only those
touched by the Book Fairy, or the Muse, can ever reach.
If you want to write fiction, you can.
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
27 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
Holly Lisle
109 books449 followersHolly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won her the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She has just published WARPAINT, the second stand-alone novel in her Cadence Drake series.
Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer…which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows:
“So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we’d tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children’s Home, where we lived.
“My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks.
“It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, “That’s a bear footprint. From the size of it, it’s a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear’s still around.”
“Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.
” ‘I don’t have the gun with me that will kill a bear,’ he told me. ‘I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I’m going to shoot him so he’ll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.’
“The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I’m sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down.
“We were not eaten by a bear that night…but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I’ll ever forget.
“I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I’m putting on paper isn’t at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn’t make my cut.”
You can find Holly on her personal site:
Hollylisle.com
You can find Cadence Drake, Holly's currently in-progress series, on her site:
CadenceDrake.com
You can find Holly's books, courses, writing workshops, and so on here:
The HowToThinkSideways.com Shop, as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in a number of bookstores in the US and around the world.
Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer…which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows:
“So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we’d tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children’s Home, where we lived.
“My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks.
“It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, “That’s a bear footprint. From the size of it, it’s a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear’s still around.”
“Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.
” ‘I don’t have the gun with me that will kill a bear,’ he told me. ‘I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I’m going to shoot him so he’ll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.’
“The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I’m sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down.
“We were not eaten by a bear that night…but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I’ll ever forget.
“I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I’m putting on paper isn’t at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn’t make my cut.”
You can find Holly on her personal site:
Hollylisle.com
You can find Cadence Drake, Holly's currently in-progress series, on her site:
CadenceDrake.com
You can find Holly's books, courses, writing workshops, and so on here:
The HowToThinkSideways.com Shop, as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in a number of bookstores in the US and around the world.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
September 18, 2015
“Mugging the Muse.” If I were teaching a writing class to sixth graders, I might use this book as a textbook. Maybe not. I would get negative feedback about a book that just states the obvious and that talks down to the reader. No one likes that.
I thought when I saw the title that I was buying a book about creativity. At its best this book gives some interesting exercises and details about creating fantasy worlds. Lee Killough does it better in “Checking on Culture.” I recommend Killough’s book.
This book is self published and contains all the horror of a self- published book including lack of quality editing. A book about writing really should be well-edited. The chapters are arranged in a weird order. She’s writing about publishing, and then she’s writing about creating plots and characters. And then she’s repeating something from three chapters ago.
Another irritating habit of this writer is that she includes some sample example paragraphs she wrote, brags about how great they are, and invites the reader to get the entire book. I am not interested. I made a mistake buying this book.
I thought when I saw the title that I was buying a book about creativity. At its best this book gives some interesting exercises and details about creating fantasy worlds. Lee Killough does it better in “Checking on Culture.” I recommend Killough’s book.
This book is self published and contains all the horror of a self- published book including lack of quality editing. A book about writing really should be well-edited. The chapters are arranged in a weird order. She’s writing about publishing, and then she’s writing about creating plots and characters. And then she’s repeating something from three chapters ago.
Another irritating habit of this writer is that she includes some sample example paragraphs she wrote, brags about how great they are, and invites the reader to get the entire book. I am not interested. I made a mistake buying this book.
June 7, 2018
This book taught me some stuff
Yeah, I gave this five stars. Anytime a book makes you bookmark, take notes, and redo the exercises until you feel that you have a grasp on them. Then you should give the book five stars, which I did, lol. This book teaches you everything about writing, that you may or may not want to know. I love the fact that the writers perspective came across real and not generic. I plan to use her index card method to build my characters. I also plan to write in every genre I want to conquer.
"The day you think you know it all is the day your work will start to weaken. Write regularly. Write daringly. Write while embracing your fear, and saying what you mean anyway. But most of all, write with joy." If you are interested in writing and want a clear voice to read. I highly recommend this book and her workshops..
Yeah, I gave this five stars. Anytime a book makes you bookmark, take notes, and redo the exercises until you feel that you have a grasp on them. Then you should give the book five stars, which I did, lol. This book teaches you everything about writing, that you may or may not want to know. I love the fact that the writers perspective came across real and not generic. I plan to use her index card method to build my characters. I also plan to write in every genre I want to conquer.
"The day you think you know it all is the day your work will start to weaken. Write regularly. Write daringly. Write while embracing your fear, and saying what you mean anyway. But most of all, write with joy." If you are interested in writing and want a clear voice to read. I highly recommend this book and her workshops..
October 6, 2018
This is a book every autor should read. Not only it contains lots of great advice, there's a chapter that really touched me.
Not only I almost cried when I read "One Good Enemy", but also felt so relieved to read that.
Everywhere you look you'll get advice as to get external support, people who believe in you, etc. or you won't make it, either as a writer or as a person. And from the people I know, this is such a strange circumstance! You really know many people that will tell you, "Good, you're doing great. Stopping being a doctor when you're going to enter middle age and becoming a writer since it's what you want is the best you can do." Do you? No, 99.9% of people will demean you or what you do so you stay put and be good. It's so great to find this validation. Mrs. Lisle, you really touched my life.
Now, to face my own enemy too...
Not only I almost cried when I read "One Good Enemy", but also felt so relieved to read that.
Everywhere you look you'll get advice as to get external support, people who believe in you, etc. or you won't make it, either as a writer or as a person. And from the people I know, this is such a strange circumstance! You really know many people that will tell you, "Good, you're doing great. Stopping being a doctor when you're going to enter middle age and becoming a writer since it's what you want is the best you can do." Do you? No, 99.9% of people will demean you or what you do so you stay put and be good. It's so great to find this validation. Mrs. Lisle, you really touched my life.
Now, to face my own enemy too...
March 23, 2019
I’m pretty sure if I were a college professor teaching creative writing 201, I’d have this as required reading (even though the author isn’t too fond of creative writing college classes, haha.) It’s not extremely in-depth, it’s not (and doesn’t proportional to be) a definite path to creating a best-seller, but it does introduce and explain a lot of topics in a way that can benefit people of various skill levels. I haven’t done all the writing exercises, but I enjoyed the ones I did and I found them to be good and quick ways to stretch one’s brain.
Most of these essays are free on the author’s website as well. They helped me out greatly when I was a newbie writer. Since the full version of this book, which includes the writing exercises and notes about how these things apply to self-publishing, is only 99 cents, I thought it was a worthwhile purchase.
Most of these essays are free on the author’s website as well. They helped me out greatly when I was a newbie writer. Since the full version of this book, which includes the writing exercises and notes about how these things apply to self-publishing, is only 99 cents, I thought it was a worthwhile purchase.
September 3, 2024
Some good parts
The most valuable part of this book are the Workshops from Section II. Which by the way, if do them then you probably don't need to buy any other craft book from this author since they are just longer (but not better) versions of those workshops.
This is a good book and I do recommend it, although personally I grew tired of her voice and her "witty ness" after a while, but she is quite successful in her own writing career so her advice is actually useful, timeless and practical.
The most valuable part of this book are the Workshops from Section II. Which by the way, if do them then you probably don't need to buy any other craft book from this author since they are just longer (but not better) versions of those workshops.
This is a good book and I do recommend it, although personally I grew tired of her voice and her "witty ness" after a while, but she is quite successful in her own writing career so her advice is actually useful, timeless and practical.
June 9, 2020
Excellent top-shelf hints on how to write and keep writing by keeping the inspiration going. Mugging the Muse explains how to train your mind away from writer's block, and toward creativity. Love this book.
January 24, 2022
Im reading this in 2022 so it's severely outdated obviously. But i didn't like her negative "practical" tone it was very rough for no reason. Lighten up. It's like listening to that mean toxic friend for hours.
Read it all in one sitting.
Read it all in one sitting.
August 31, 2020
good sharply written intro to being a fiction writer
June 4, 2012
This is a book written for anyone who considers becoming an author. It is a great book, with that puts things into perspective, and brings up details that we might not think of before starting to write. Lisly speaks from experience and while reading this book, I felt like she was talking to me. She was sharing her opinion and view on the world of publishing and warning us, if not preparing us, of the many obstacles we could encounter and the best way to surmount them.
I found this book very useful, and will reference back to it in future. If you're thinking of becoming an author this book will be useful. It also has a section on co-writing a book with someone else, and I think Lisle has some very invaluable tips to share.
This book comes in PDF format and is available for free from her website.
I found this book very useful, and will reference back to it in future. If you're thinking of becoming an author this book will be useful. It also has a section on co-writing a book with someone else, and I think Lisle has some very invaluable tips to share.
This book comes in PDF format and is available for free from her website.
June 5, 2013
When it comes to reading books on how to write, I'm biased and totally unconcerned about being objective and realistic. That being said, this is a great book and a fun read. :) It encourages and gives great advice. I've never read one of her books, but I'm perfectly willing to try a few, based on the quality of her writing about writing. It's a good sign that she can tug my emotional authorial apron strings like this. Of course, what I really want to see is the complete novel she wrote in a single month. Perhaps it's a stinker, perhaps I'm going to give it a great deal of that proverbial benefit of the doubt because of the extreme pressure she was put under. Still, it's an interesting little mind game I'm going to lay on my psyche. Thank you Holly!
April 27, 2013
Holly Lisle kicks ass in this book about how to write successfully. She doesn't pull any punches as she describes the nitty gritty of writing. By the end I felt like I had been mugged and relieved of my writing preconceptions. They were writing misconceptions and I needed a knock on the head to let them go. Lisle presents a realistic approach to writing and getting published. Practical ideas such as "you can't hit a target you can't clearly see" got me clarifying my goals, not just for writing, but for life in general. Great book for writers, well worth the money and time. It is a writing workshop in a book. Strong work, Lisle. Thank you!
November 28, 2011
Originally, I gave this book four stars when I finished reading it, but after rereading it I realized that it deserves five. This offers so much real, practical advice for writers that other books don't go into. This is not a how-to-write book, it is how-to-be-a-writer book, and we need more books like that out there.
December 18, 2015
This is a very personal, funny and hard-hitting examination of what it's like to be a writer. There are excellent exercises to help one determine if the path is appealing and then more to help one get started TODAY. Also some great information on the changes in the publishing industry (self-publishing has become a serious option).
March 22, 2010
Not bad considering I don't typically enjoy non-fiction books in their entirety. Was definitely insightful though for someone who's always panicked at the mere thought of writing. Maybe now I'll actually start writing up some of my weird dreams.... don't hold your breath though.
August 7, 2016
Lisle offers basic practical writing advice through rambling accounts of her own experience. She mentions some books that she used to improve her writing. The book needs editing for misspelled word, grammar, and punctuation. The author used too many dashes and ellipsis.
January 28, 2011
Review to be added later. (I go back and re-read this one periodically - very good for encouraging yourself to write, and free on her website.)
January 31, 2016
A 'how to' book written with down-to-earth humour, giving the lowdown of writing, how to keep wrtiting and how to survive both wrtiting and publishing.
Enjoyable and informative.
Enjoyable and informative.
July 17, 2012
motivational, insightful
September 11, 2012
Good for beginning writers, who aren't sure how to make their muse cooperate.
Read
January 15, 2019Good ideas
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews