Writing from Life: How to Turn Your Personal Experience into Profitable Prose

by Lynne Hackles

This book will show how your own personal experiences can provide you with an endless supply of ideas for your writing - whether fiction or non-fiction. You will learn how to write about what you know - and you certainly know a lot. The good news is that the older you are, and the older you get, the more experiences you have had - so you'll always have something to write about. The author, Lynn Hackles, will show you how to make your own 'Raking up your past' file - using memories, lists, diaries, newspapers, smells, family trees, etc. And how to turn your own anecdotes recounted to friends and family into useful prose; and how to fashion the passed-down history of your ancestors into a family saga.With this book you'll also learn how sell a snippet of conversation; make money by sharing secrets; take your boss and your best friend and come up with a new character; sell one event in your life to several different markets; impart knowledge you didn't think you had to people who didn't know they needed it; and, use the emotions, traumas, joys and experiences of your own life to make your writing stronger and more saleable. With this book you'll never run out of ideas; writers block will be a thing of the past. AUTHOR The first words Lynne Hackles ever sold netted GBP 2. Since then her motto 'never let truth get in the way of entertainment' has helped turn hundreds of personal experiences into stories which have sold in the UK and abroad. She leads writing workshops and runs tutorials for a leading correspondence school.

Genres: Writing

186 pages, Paperback

Published August 15, 2008

Reviews

[Jonathan Hockey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have been reading over parts of this the past few weeks. It has given me a few ideas and provided an interesting perspective to me

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly written, with some simple exercises and great advice about 'writing what we know'. The author explains how one person's dreary day-to-day life can be of great interest to another person. She shows how we can write about the places where we live, the people we've met, our hobbies, and so much more.

Basic exercises invite the reader to explore memories and make notes that can be used later on - picking ahd choosing people and characteristics to invent new characters. I particularly liked her recommendation to ask, 'What if?' about even the most routine of events, to explore new ideas and to extend a scene into a short story or even a novel.

There wasn't much in the book that was new to me, but it made an interesting read, and I would recommend this highly to anyone thinking of starting to write, and wondering where to get ideas from.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/...

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps helpful for soe, but not for me just now.

[Robert Day · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like it for the fast a breezy way in which the author tells us that pretty much everything in our lives can be used as fodder for writing. Every microscopic aspect of life is examined and detailed; and in fact it was a pleasure to read this book just to be prompted to think about things that I thought were long forgotten. It was like getting a lightning tour of my life and the memories thereof.

However, at the end of the book, I have written not one single word, much less 'profitable prose'. Whilst reading, I couldn't get over the feeling that Lynne Hackles wasn't writing this book for me, rather for her octogenarian peers, and this kind of rankled somewhat.

If the book were called 'Remembering Your Life: How to Turn Your 80 Years of Personal Experience Into Pleasant Daydreams and Reminiscences', then Lynne would have nailed it.

Apart from that - spot on!

[أروى · Rating 4 out of 5]

يشرح هذا الكتاب كيف يمكن أن تكون تجاربك الشخصية مادة للكتابة الإبداعية...

إنه يتماشى مع القول الذي يقول أن كل شيء في الحياة قصة قابلة للكتابة..!

[Carol Kerry-Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay, but not what I was looking for