English Writing

Given the stiff competition in today's attention economy, many pastors feel pressured to make their sermons strikingly original. But Austin Carty, a longtime pastor and award-winning writer, has a different perspective: nothing we do or say is ever truly new. The power of a sermon is found not in novelty, but in the mandate it gives preachers to collect their thoughts every week and put them down in a succinct, coherent fashion.

This novel had its birth in the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens, and it is within that profound and sprawling friendship that Inside Story unfurls. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the...

The Neversink River in New York’s Catskill Mountains, with its plunges and gorges, is one of the world’s great trout streams. This treasury from the finest fly-fishing writers takes a revelatory look at the river from its earliest days right up to the present, and from its origins high on Slide Mountain to the wild and deep ledge pools where the biggest fish live.

Whether you talk, text, or email, Effective Communication at Work has everything you need to help boost your workplace performance and productivity. From honing listening to polishing speaking and writing skills, this essential guide delivers simple, powerful strategies and timely tips that can help you increase the impact of your business communication and correspondence both online and offline. Learn how to build stronger relationships and advance your career by mastering the art of effective communication.

Veteran horror screenwriter and novelist Jamie Nash leads us into the shadows of Blake Snyder’s legendary Monster in the House genre—and sheds light over the secrets to crafting truly terrifying tales.

Leading apologetics writer with a proven track record tackles the most difficult Old Testament passages and topics, helping listeners to reconcile the God of righteousness with the God of love.

Taking 36 songs from his back catalogue, folk-punk icon Frank Turner explores his songwriting process. Find out the stories behind the songs forged in the hedonistic years of the mid-2000s North London scene, the ones perfected in Nashville studios and everything in between. Some of these songs arrive fully formed, as if they've always been there; some take graft and endless reworking to find 'the one'. In exploring them all, Turner reflects with eloquence, insight and self-deprecating wit on exactly what it is to be a songwriter.

As the new owner of the worst business in history, Jack has a lot on his plate. His self-appointed “biggest fan” wants to finally meet, and won’t take no for an answer. The annoying cultists are back and cultier than ever. Plus, there’s a creature living under the building's crawlspace that must be fed regularly (or else). To top it all off, the entire town’s collective memories have been haphazardly rewritten, and Jack's placement in these recollections are decidedly unflattering.

There's more to writing a successful fantasy story than building a unique world or inventing a new type of magic. From the writing of strong, action-packed scenes to the creation of dynamic, multi-dimensional characters, fantasy author Deborah Chester guides novices and intermediate writers through a step-by-step process of story construction. Whether offering tips on how to test a plot premise or survive what she calls the dark dismal middle, Chester shares the techniques she uses in writing her own novels.

This step-by-step comedy writer's guide is for the budding stand-up comedian to develop fresh original material and craft it into great performance. Become clear on what your comedy special powers are. Edit and secretly test your material. Craft your set into a streamlined performance, and become a better comic out of the gate! Now you can get rid of your writer's block!

Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot.

Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to what you need to continue existing as a writer, On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer describes the defining role played by rejection in literary endeavors and contemplates failure as the essence of the writer’s life.

First published in 1925, Buddha's Teachings was originally edited by Japanese scholars of Buddhism before WWII and distributed widely throughout Japan. The first English edition was published in 1934.

Are you tired of waiting on inspiration to complete your songs? Are you not getting the response you hoped for from your songs? Is the songwriting process painful at times? Song Building will help you write songs faster and avoid getting stuck on second verses.

An assemblage of reflections on the nature of writing and the writer from one the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Throughout Hemingway’s career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing - that it takes off “whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or talk about it”.

Discover the songwriting technique used in 97% of all hit songs. Music is a tough industry to break into. With production gear being affordable for the first time in history, it seems like everyone is making music these days. Getting noticed in the continuous stream of information that is the Internet seems almost impossible. But: There is a technique designed specifically to captivate and hook an audience and with The Addiction Formula, you can learn it in a couple of hours.

Theme—the mysterious cousin of plot and character. Too often viewed as abstract rather than actionable, theme is frequently misunderstood and left to chance. Some writers even insist theme should not be purposefully implemented. This is unfortunate, because in many ways theme is story. Theme is the heart, the meaning, the point. Nothing that important should be overlooked. Powerful themes are never incidental. They emerge from the conjunction of strong plots and resonant character arcs.

Playboy Roger Carr is handsome, wealthy, and connected. As an occasional lawyer, he’s the right man to send to the French Riviera to secure a villa for an important client. It’s the perfect assignment, complete with fast cars and fast women, until strange things begin to happen and Roger realizes that someone is trying to kill him.

Run the Song is also the story of how a professional critic, frustrated with conventional modes of criticism, finds his way back to a deeper relationship with music. When stumped or preoccupied by a piece of music, Ratliff starts to think that perhaps running can tell him more about what he’s listening to—let’s run it, he’ll say. And with that, the listener in turn is invited to listen alongside one of the great listeners of our day in this wildly inventive and consistently thought-provoking chronicle of a profoundly unsettling time.

Do you want to be more humorous? Have you ever watched someone effortlessly make a group laugh and wished you knew their magic? Well, wonder no more. The mystery of charisma is finally unveiled; the fallacy of "you either have it, or you don't" has been laid bare. Anyone can learn to make people laugh. Observing a couple of surprisingly simple rules, Make People Laugh is a comedic tour de force, as it explores all the facets of laughter. Turn your lazy bones into funny bones, and you will have made the world a better place.