Do you want a book about getting published that is written by an unknown person? I don’t think so. The author, writing professor Susan Shapiro, has taught more than 25,000 students at NYU, Columbia, Temple, The New School, and Harvard University during the last 20 years. Many of her students have had their first stories printed in the New York Times. I personally think that’s pretty impressive; that’s the person I want to learn from!
The book starts out by saying that it offers everything you need to learn to write and sell your story in five weeks or less. Her first piece of advice is that the best way to break into publishing is with a great three-page double spaced personal essay. From there, she starts you off at a pretty good clip, because after all, in order to accomplish this in five weeks, you have to get started. So pick a story, write in new York Times format (buy a newspaper if you need to see what that looks like.) and follow Shapiro’s directions. All this and more comes from the first assignment she gives her students. Moreover, she states that she was “blown away” by what her students had written when she first did that, and surprised that many of them were published. I think that should offer encouragement to anyone who thinks they would like to have an article published.
I love to read, and so far I am very happy to do only that. I got a copy of this book for my son, who writes well, and I hope it will be useful to him. Perhaps someday, I will try my hand at writing too. If I ever do, this is definitely the book I will turn too.
The book starts out by saying that it offers everything you need to learn to write and sell your story in five weeks or less. Her first piece of advice is that the best way to break into publishing is with a great three-page double spaced personal essay. From there, she starts you off at a pretty good clip, because after all, in order to accomplish this in five weeks, you have to get started. So pick a story, write in new York Times format (buy a newspaper if you need to see what that looks like.) and follow Shapiro’s directions. All this and more comes from the first assignment she gives her students. Moreover, she states that she was “blown away” by what her students had written when she first did that, and surprised that many of them were published. I think that should offer encouragement to anyone who thinks they would like to have an article published.
I love to read, and so far I am very happy to do only that. I got a copy of this book for my son, who writes well, and I hope it will be useful to him. Perhaps someday, I will try my hand at writing too. If I ever do, this is definitely the book I will turn too.