Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book by Mary Carroll Moore

Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book Reviews

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  Katherine Dering

  Your Book Starts Here provides tangible, useful advice for every step of the writing process, from gathering inspiration to managing pacing, from searching the unconscious for themes to working out rough chapter transitions. The author recognizes the iterative nature of writing; various chapters deal specifically with getting out those first inspired blazing hot pages or working out scenes and dialogue or developing well-rounded characters. And most of all,with Mry's creative "W," it helps with overall organization, recognizing gaps, duplications or misplacements that will slow the book's movement.
  
  Some people are born geniuses, like Beethoven or Jane Austen. I needed help. And I believe the success of my book Shot in the Head, is at least partly due to things I learned from Mary Caroll Moore.
  
  I have a shelf full of writing advice books that I've collected over the years. Most of them, I've read the first twenty pages, skipped through a few more chapters at random, and then thought, yeah, but...
  
  Yeah but, how do I actually do all this? Your Book Starts Here tells us.
  
  With the exception of a few classics like Joseph Campbell, the rest of my writing advice books are being recycled.
  
  ps. I have used exercises from this book to teach memoir writing and my students loved them.
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  Michelle Morrill

  Only took me a year to get through, off and on, putting it down for months at a time, but finally finished. I have used this as a consulting resource primarily, picking it back up in between writing when I needed direction or inspiration. Great information, tips, and techniques. Easy to absorb. Lots of optional exercises to do also.
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  Heidi Fettig Parton

  If you've ever thought people are born writers, think again. It takes lots of practice and I'm still learning. With this book, however, a writer's practice is guided carefully and methodically towards developing the skills it takes to write an engaging book. Practical, easy-to-follow steps build on each other from chapter to chapter, assisting writers in all genres to develop a mere glimpse of an idea into a book-length project.
  
  Read this book from cover to cover, then keep it on your bookshelf to pull out whenever you get stuck or even just need a few writing exercises to warm up for a day (or hour) of writing.
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  Jodie Sinclair

  Loved all the twists and turns. Well written.
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  Cynthia

  Many writing books for beginners focus on technique--voice, point-of-view, word choice, etc. Mary Carroll Moore's book is more about inspiring the beginning writer to organize and execute a book, whether fiction, memoir, or nonfiction. She recognizes the tremendous labor a book is--how easy it is to get off track and give up. Some chapters are still dedicated to things like voice, but most of the book is an inspirational message for doing it--beginning and finishing a book.
  
  Moore is also well known for teaching the three-act structure and storyboarding (or the W plot). I originally purchased this book with these chapters in mind. I'd seen her videos on YouTube and wanted to own her lectures on these topics.
  
  This book is easy to read--would be great for undergraduate writers--also graduate students struggling with writers' block. She's been teaching for years and illustrates the book with many useful case examples.
• 
  Nancy

  Extremely helpful and tangible with tips and exercises. Mary's book helped me with structure, themes, storylines, and character development, specifically the tension between a character's inner and outer lives. I highly recommend this book to anyone studying the craft of writing.
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  Kayla Randolph

  Clear, helpful, and encouraging. The personal anecdotes add believability and build trust between the reader and the author.
  
  As an editor, it provided great ideas to implement in editorial coaching exercises for an author I was working with.
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  Judy Ring

  If you are working on a book, thinking about working on a book...dream of working on a book or just enjoy the process of writing. I recommend this book!
  
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  Rick

  One of the better books on writing. The questions after each chapter were great for getting you thinking differently about what you are writing.
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  Jennifer Louden

  Great smart overview of how to write a book. Comprehensive and gives some ideas that I've never encountered before.