More than likely, you have always wanted to write a book, screenplay, or stage play. Now you can and base it on your personal life experiences. Let this handbook be your guide into the writing world as a hobby or profession. You will find in this book a large number of writing secretes, tips, advice, and pitfalls. The material is not complicated, theoretical, or analytical. It is presented in an easy-to-grasp format. As you go through the pages, you will feel like you are having a cup of coffee with your own private mentor. This is a fun book, and the subject matter is humorously presented. You will be shown how to take the various events of your life and develop them into a writing project. In addition, essentials such as grammar, punctuation, and good writing skills are painlessly presented. We have all had interesting experiences in our lives. You can now join countless others who have used their backgrounds as the basis of a book, screenplay, or stage play.

Ex-Girlfriend Emma Carter has a lot on her mind. Her boyfriend got a life—in L.A. Her hairdresser found God. And that extra ten pounds of “relationship flab” she acquired while falling in love with a commitment-phobe has just put her out of the running for new romance—or so she thinks. But before Emma can get on with her life, she’s got to face a few startling truths about being single in New York City…. Confession #5: Marriage suddenly seems like a social disease. Even the latest bride in my family—my mother—has put me to work in the service of her wedding day. What about us non-brides-to-be? Working in the warped little world of wedding planning has only led me to one conclusion: If you don’t get married in this world, you get nothing. Once, in an editorial meeting, I jokingly suggested that a woman should get a bridal shower when she turns thirty, wedding or not. Everyone looked at me as if I were some kind of nut. I am 31 years old; am I not entitled to free Calphalon yet? Who ever thought that baring your soul could be this good?

Confessions of an American Male: Hilarious Moments from the Life of a Member of that Diminishing Species By: Brian Dickens Barrabee Confessions of an American Male is about one man’s recognition of the absurdities that happen in every man’s existence. Some of these stories are fact, some embellished, some astronomically embellished, but all are based on truth. The author takes great delight in sharing these tales of his life and hope the readers will be delighted as well.

A story of faith amidst her struggles A story of keeping on keeping on despite the hurdles along the way A story of victory by making her dreams a reality through God's sustaining grace. A story of delays turned into delightful moments A story of hope in the face of her giants A little confession that can give life's lesson A little confession that can be an inspiration The untold story of a medicine student who is determined to finish the race she started.

“My take on life is that it’s a giant hors d’oeuvres tray and my approach is to have a taste of everything.” - Jack Fitzgerald Jack Fitzgerald is the author of several books and has produced many stage plays. He recently turned 89 and, in spite of failing eyesight, decided to write one last book. It had to be unique and different. Fitzgerald’s book consists of forty-two emails. They are replies to phone calls, greeting cards, and emails, none of which are in the book. What you do see though are forty-two email replies from Jack to these friends, relatives, and his readers. These emails build a matrix that in many ways is like a puzzle. From each email you will glean certain information about Jack’s life. As you proceed through the book, you will get more and more droplets of information. By the time you finish email forty-two, you will have a rather complete autobiography of Jack’s life. So, for once, you can have unusual fun reading someone’s emails and clues to their life lessons and experiences. So, get started at once on this email puzzle and begin collecting virtual autobiographical clues. Have fun on your very first virtual autobiographical puzzle.

This book chronicles the author's love affair with film from the 1930s through the beginning of the new millennium. In addition to revealing personal movie-related experiences, film critic Betty Jo Tucker describes encounters with veteran actors.

1987 American Book Award Winner A A A This ambitious and enchanting novel is both modern-day epic and a work of great emotional and spiritual death. Bold in its historical scope, rich in colorful settings, and eminently readable, Confessions of Madame Psyche also reaches inward, toward quieter truths. A A A The novel is narrated by Mei0li Murrow, born in San Francisco in 1895, the illegitimate daughter of a charismatic confidence man and the Chinese prostitute he has "rescued" from the streets. After her mother's early death, Mei-li is left to care of her mercenary half-sister Erika. When the young Mei-li, by pure coincidence, predicts the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Erika contructs her identity as "Madame Psyche"-exploiting Mei'li's exoticism and her clients' yearnings for contact with the dead in a series of ingeniously orchestrated seances that win her renown as a medium in California and then in the death-soaked Europe of the First World War. A A A Ironically, it is when she manages to finally reject the popular "spirituality" that has made her famous that Mei-li experiences a truer spiritual vision: One day, while walking on the beach, she has a revelation of her connection to all of life-"an experience of hidden reality which I have never doubted...and which left me permanently changed by what I then knew and know still and will always know." A A A Mei-li's subsequent journey leads her through the aspirations and disappointments of a utopian commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 1920s; to the poverty of migrant work camps in the Depression-era Salinas Valley; and to the courage of the first strikes on San Jose's cannery row. Finally, when the relentless Erika cheats her out of an inheritance by having her committed to the Napa State Hospital, Mee-li finds her greatest wisdom and peace among the outcasts of the asylum-and there writes her "confessions." A A A Mei'li's story is ensconed in the rich history of Northern California in the first half of the twentieth century, and peopled by comrades of many classes and cultures and lovers both male and female; but her central odyssey remains one of inner discovery. In Confessions of Madame Psyche, Dorothy Bryant has created a character who is so honest in her search for truth, growth, and spiritual understanding that this quest becomes inherent to her survival.

Women Screenwriters is a study of more than 300 female writers from 60 nations, from the first film scenarios produced in 1986 to the present day. Divided into six sections by continent, the entries give an overview of the history of women screenwriters in each country, as well as individual biographies of its most influential.

2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Biography. Ben Hecht had seen his share of death-row psychopaths, crooked ward bosses, and Capone gun thugs by the time he had come of age as a crime reporter in gangland Chicago. His grim experience with what he called “the soul of man” gave him a kind of uncanny foresight a decade later, when a loose cannon named Adolf Hitler began to rise to power in central Europe. In 1932, Hecht solidified his legend as "the Shakespeare of Hollywood" with his thriller Scarface, the Howard Hughes epic considered the gangster movie to end all gangster movies. But Hecht rebelled against his Jewish bosses at the movie studios when they refused to make films about the Nazi menace. Leveraging his talents and celebrity connections to orchestrate a spectacular one-man publicity campaign, he mobilized pressure on the Roosevelt administration for an Allied plan to rescue Europe’s Jews. Then after the war, Hecht became notorious, embracing the labels “gangster” and “terrorist” in partnering with the mobster Mickey Cohen to smuggle weapons to Palestine in the fight for a Jewish state. The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist is a biography of a great twentieth-century writer that treats his activism during the 1940s as the central drama of his life. It details the story of how Hecht earned admiration as a humanitarian and vilification as an extremist at this pivotal moment in history, about the origins of his beliefs in his varied experiences in American media, and about the consequences. Who else but Hecht could have drawn the admiration of Ezra Pound, clowned around with Harpo Marx, written Notorious and Spellbound with Alfred Hitchcock, launched Marlon Brando’s career, ghosted Marilyn Monroe’s memoirs, hosted Jack Kerouac and Salvador Dalí on his television talk show, and plotted revolt with Menachem Begin? Any lover of modern history who follows this journey through the worlds of gangsters, reporters, Jazz Age artists, Hollywood stars, movie moguls, political radicals, and guerrilla fighters will never look at the twentieth century in the same way again.