The soul of creative writing
By: Richard Goodman.
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New Brunswick, NJ
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781412807463
Subjects: English language -- Rhetoric; Creative writing
First sentence: Language is sound by which we communicate. You could say it’s organized sound. Or patterned sound. Or sound charged with meaning. But it’s still sound. You listen to me speak, and you’re listening to sound. But it’s variable sound. It’s sound with—pauses. With emphasis. With, well, you know, a certain rhythm.
Description: "I have a faith in language,” said the poet W. S. Merwin. “It’s the ultimate achievement that we as a species have evolved so far.” Language is a deep ocean of living words, as varied as undersea life. It is a gift inherited by each person when he or she is born; it can be corrupted and regulated, but it cannot be owned. It is an enormous, complex, inexhaustible gift. The Soul of Creative Writing is a tribute to language and to its potentials. It explores the elements of language, style, rhythm, sound, and the choice of the right word. Richard Goodman paints an image of how language can produce a life and meaning that otherwise cannot exist in the symbols themselves.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The music of prose; title: In search of the exact word; title: The secret strength of words; title: Some things English can't do, and shouldn't; title: Using the techniques of fiction to make your creative nonfiction even more creative; title: Finding a great title; title: The eminent domain of punctuation; title: It's about nothing: finding subjects for creative writing in everyday life; title: Maxims about writing.