"100 imagination-stretching writing exercises inspired by the idea of creative constraints, from the author of The Making of a Story.
When you are facing down a blank page (or screen), a constraint-based prompt—for example, 'you must use the words 'cloud' and 'green'' or 'you must set the scene in a crowded grocery store'—can get your brain working in unexpected ways.
In this creative writing guide, longtime teacher and novelist Alice LaPlante shares 100 original exercises that will simultaneously push you into a corner and give you the tools to write yourself out of it. LaPlante explains the purpose of each exercise—to sharpen your ear for dialogue, generate surprising images, or access intense emotions—and breaks down student examples to reveal how to achieve these goals. Whether you are looking to jumpstart new ideas or find a fresh angle on a work in progress, and whether you write fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry, Write Yourself Out of a Corner will strengthen your imagination and your craft."
""An eerie, tense, and finely written novel…Readers will grip their chairs" (SFGate.com) as they try to unravel this tale of psychological suspense from the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of Turn of Mind.
Jane loses everything when her teenage daughter is killed in a senseless accident. Devastated, she manages to make one tiny stab at a new life: she moves from San Francisco to the seaside town of Half Moon Bay. Jane is inconsolable, and yet, as the months go by, she is able to cobble together some version of a job, of friends, of the possibility of peace.
And then, children begin to disappear. And soon, Jane sees her own pain reflected in all the parents in the town. She wonders if she will be able to live through the aching loss, the fear all around her. And as the disappearances continue, she begins to see that what her neighbors are wondering is if it is Jane herself who has unleashed the horror of loss.
Alice LaPlante's "well-crafted novel of psychological suspense" is a chilling story about a mother haunted by her past, a "brooding suspense novel…dark, starkly beautiful…LaPlante uses a seductively dangerous landscape to mirror her heroine's inner life" (Kirkus Reviews)."
"The New York Times bestseller—a stunning first novel, both literary and thriller, about a retired orthopedic surgeon with dementia.
With unmatched patience and a pulsating intensity, Alice LaPlante brings us deep into a brilliant woman's deteriorating mind, where the impossibility of recognizing reality can be both a blessing and a curse.
As the book opens, Dr. Jennifer White's best friend, Amanda, who lived down the block, has been killed, and four fingers surgically removed from her hand. Dr. White is the prime suspect and she herself doesn't know whether she did it. Told in White's own voice, fractured and eloquent, a picture emerges of the surprisingly intimate, complex alliance between these life-long friends—two proud, forceful women who were at times each other's most formidable adversaries. As the investigation into the murder deepens and White's relationships with her live-in caretaker and two grown children intensify, a chilling question lingers: is White's shattered memory preventing her from revealing the truth or helping her to hide it?
'An electrifying book. Thought-provoking, humane, funny, tragic, a tour de force that can't be a first novel—and yet it is.' —Ann Packer, New York Times-bestselling author
'This poignant debut immerses us in dementia's complex choreography... [A] lyrical mosaic, an indelible portrait of a disappearing mind.' —People
'LaPlante has imagined a lunatic landscape well. The twists and turns of mind this novel charts are haunting and original.' —The New York TImes Book Review"
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