Absolute Write - Back to home

Subscribe to the Absolute Write Newsletter and get

 the Agents! Agents! Agents! report free! Click here.

 

  Win a 1-year subscription to Writer's Digest by subscribing to Absolute Markets-- all paying markets for your writing. Click here.

 

Inside The Cover Book Reviews
Review by Donna D'Amour

The Canadian Writer's Guide, 2003 Edition
Paul  G. Cormack, Editor
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
553 pages
$27.95 Cdn.

Writers love to read about writing, both for pleasure and to perfect their techniques.  The Canadian Writer's Guide, official handbook of The Canadian Authors Association, offers writing wisdom from ninety-three contributors.  Articles cover every genre of nonfiction and fiction, from journalism, poetry and lyrics, writing for children, biography, screen, theatre and radio, to writing for e-markets.  They also include a section on non-traditional writing markets such as speech and technical writing.

A few of my favorite articles are: 

"Traps For The Unwary Writer" by Madelon A. Smid, who gives a checklist to see if you are serious writer or someone who is always attending classes with the same old material.

"How the Morning Pages Inspire" by Carol Kavanagh provides a goal to get you started each day.

"The Value of a Freelance Journal" by Christina Truman offers practical record keeping for the beginning freelancer. By keeping a monthly tally of the effort given to your career and the payback, you decide when to change directions or markets.

"The Electronic Cottage #1:Setting Up Your Own Virtual Company" by Eric Fletcher guides you through starting your home based, internet based, writing business.  He follows it with a detailed equipment list.  New writers as well as many writers who operate from home already could benefit from this advice.

Attracting the muse, taming her once you have, and charging accordingly for your work, are covered here.  Preparing a book manuscript and shopping for an agent will be useful to the more prolific.  The book ends with a writer's resource section that includes lists of organizations, Canadian contests, workshops, retreats and courses, literary agents, and grants available to writers.

I have a couple of articles in this collection: "Find a Spot in the Glossies" on magazine writing, and "Breaking into Newspapers," which I hope will give people more information than I had when I began.

This is the kind of book to keep close by and to consult frequently to recharge both for pleasure and for profit.

Donna is a former freelance reporter for The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax.  Her articles have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Saltscapes, Fifty-Plus and Reading Today.  She just had her first e-book published, The Hallowe'en Flight, by childrenzbooks.com.  Her collection of essays on everyday life, Colouring the Road, was published by Lancelot Press in 1995.  She and her husband have a video production company, CTR Video, which produces industrial and promotional video.

Google
 

Web
Absolute Classes
Absolute Write

Sponsored links

Ring binders

 

 

 

Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer!

How to find a book publisher

 

Home

Text on this site Copyright © 1998-2007 Absolute Write, all rights reserved.
Please contact the authors if you'd like to reprint articles on this site.  All copyrights are retained by original authors.  And plagiarizers will be rounded up, handcuffed, and stuck into a very small and humid room wherein they must listen to Barney sing the "I Love You, You Love Me" song over and over again.

writers writing software