Word Up! How to Write Powerful Sentences and Paragraphs (and Everything You Build from Them)

by Marcia Riefer Johnston, Scott Abel (Foreword by)

Overview

Want to write more powerfully? You've come to the right book. "Word Up!"--an eclectic collection of essays, more inspiration guide than style guide--serves up tips and insights for anyone who wants to write with more umph. "Word Up!" does what too few writing books do: it practices while preaching, shows while telling, uses powerful writing to talk about powerful writing. "Word Up!" explores the perplexities and celebrates the pleasures of the English language. It leaves you smiling--and ready to conquer your next blank (or blah) page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780985820305
Publisher:	Northwest Brainstorms Publishing
Publication date:	04/27/2013
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

When Marcia was twelve, "American Girl" magazine printed her eight-paragraph story, "The Key," and paid her $15. She has been writing ever since.

To share her love of writing, she has collected some one-of-a-kind essays into a book: "Word Up! How to Write Powerful Sentences and Paragraphs (And Everything You Build from Them)."

At Lake Forest College, she wrote one-act plays that were performed on the campus stage, learned from, and buried. She studied under Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff in the Syracuse University creative-writing program. She taught technical writing in the Engineering School at Cornell University. She has done writing of all kinds for organizations of all kinds, from the Fortune 500 to the just plain fortunate.

Marcia has written for the scholarly journal "Shakespeare Quarterly," the professional journal "Technical Communication," the weekly newspaper "Syracuse New Times," and that user guide you used last week and didn't swear at. She used to write letters by the boxful. She has contributed posts to her daughter's Peace Corps blog, texts to her son's Droid, and answers to her husband's crossword puzzles. Her words have landed on billboards, blackboards, birthday cakes, boxes of eggs, and the back of her book. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

What People are Saying About This

Kristina Halvorson

This book embodies the adage practice what you preach. Marcia's writing style is powerful in its own way: engaging, funny, instructive, and supportive. I've longed for a book on writing to recommend ... and this is it!
—Kristina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web

Sherri Henkin

Wheaties for writing!
—Sherri Henkin, author of Growing the Write Way blog

Bryan A. Garner

Excellent.
—Bryan A. Garner, author of Garner's Modern American Usage, on "You Don't Know from Prepositions"

Caroline Leavitt

So entertaining that bettering your prose is almost effortless.
—Caroline Leavitt, book critic for the Boston Globe and People

Arthur Plotnik

Illuminating ... If some of those sharp-witted classical rhetoricians were blogging in today's idiom, they might sound like Marcia Riefer Johnston, delivering both quintessential and quirky writing tips along with charming, pointed asides. With bright style and nimble tips that even professional writers forget (or never knew), she channels the inspirations and lessons of her own writing career into a brisk giddyap for balky prose.
—Arthur Plotnik, author of Spunk & Bite