Table of Contents
Introduction: The Quest for the Special Secret Sauce 1
Part 1 What You Need to Know Before You Start Writing 17
1 Steal, Steal, Steal: Learning to Read like a Writer 19
2 Craft Your "I": Thinking of Yourself as a Character 29
3 Sex, Drugs, and Palestinian Statehood: Finding a Topic 37
Amanda + Jim 53
4 Aboutness: An Essay Is Often About Something Other Than What It's About 60
Adam Finds his Pirates 68
5 The Hole in the Donut: Saying the Hardest Thing 72
6 Tell Us About Your World in Two Hundred Words: The Short Answers 80
Emma's Shorties 91
Part 2 Getting It Down on the Page and Then Cleaning It Up 97
7 Shitty First Drafts: The Importance of Allowing Yourself to Write Badly 99
8 Seeing Again: Revision Means Re-Vision 107
9 Don't Try to Hook the Reader like a Trout: Opening Lines 111
Peyton's Ankle 117
10 Danger! Some Moves Not to Make 120
11 Semicolons Are like Loaded Guns: Mechanics Matter 139
12 My Little Bag of Writing Tricks: Some Tips 148
Conclusion: Getting It Done 160
Acknowledgments 167