The Practice of Creative Writing
A Guide for StudentsFourth Edition| ©2021 Heather Sellers
Heather Sellers, who writes in multiple genres herself, has developed a lively, welcoming, student-centered approach that teaches creative concentration, close reading, and generating pages. She provides opportunities to be playful and to experiment at the same time that she teaches students the importance of discipline, form, and craft. Heather Sellers is a certified online instructor, and The Practice of Creative Writing is designed to be used in traditional face-to-face classrooms or in online education.
Each chapter begins with objectives for that module. Prompts and writing practices are carefully sequenced. Every chapter ends with both genre-specific writing projects alongside hybrid and experimental prompts. The readings included in this new edition invite students to experience an even wider range of innovative and new literatures. A new chapter on creative ways to approach revision as a shaping practice engaged throughout the writing process helps students work harder on their writing.
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Be bold. Write well. Have fun.
When it comes to writing, The Practice of Creative Writing has a simple message: you can do this, and it’s worthwhile to try. Designed for students in the introductory course, The Practice of Creative Writing teaches writers how to trust their own voice, experiment with form, and develop a writing process that allows them to spend more productive time at the desk. Rather than locking into one genre early, writers are encouraged to work among and in between genres and to focus on creating a writing practice that privileges close observation, patience, and techniques of pattern, energy, and shape.
Heather Sellers, who writes in multiple genres herself, has developed a lively, welcoming, student-centered approach that teaches creative concentration, close reading, and generating pages. She provides opportunities to be playful and to experiment at the same time that she teaches students the importance of discipline, form, and craft. Heather Sellers is a certified online instructor, and The Practice of Creative Writing is designed to be used in traditional face-to-face classrooms or in online education.
Each chapter begins with objectives for that module. Prompts and writing practices are carefully sequenced. Every chapter ends with both genre-specific writing projects alongside hybrid and experimental prompts. The readings included in this new edition invite students to experience an even wider range of innovative and new literatures. A new chapter on creative ways to approach revision as a shaping practice engaged throughout the writing process helps students work harder on their writing.
Features
A flexible, process-based approach for writers in every genre. The six components of effective writing -- images, energy, tension, patterns, insight, and shape -- are presented in order of difficulty. This order allows students to build facility with each component and layer the techniques to produce more sophisticated pieces as the course progresses.
Instruction in creative process and creative concentration in every chapter.
- Effective strategies for building a writing practice are presented, distinguishing “life blocks” from “creative blocks.”
- Revision is presented as an act of shaping, and something writers do throughout the writing process, not an activity they tack on at the end.
- Writers who wish to explore process and creativity further will find a detailed updated list of resources at the end of the book.
Giving and receiving feedback, working well in a writing group, and building a portfolio of polished work is emphasized throughout the book.
- Practical prompts and checklists aid students in distinguishing between revising and editing, and encourage higher levels of reader awareness.
- Workshop sections in each strategy chapter provide guidance for self-guided revision as well as peer response.
- Writers’ tips and checklists help students continually assess and revise their own work and make constructive suggestions to peers.
- Chapter Eleven presents detailed information to support writers in bringing their work to an audience.
Helps students write in a variety of forms and genres.
- Various forms of writing from across the genres — from the list to the sonnet to the one-act play — are presented as recipes, and students are set loose to create a body of work.
- Examples of many of the forms presented in Chapter Ten appear throughout the text, including journeys, graphic narratives, sonnets, and villanelles.
- Every piece included represents aspects of the six strategies and can be used to illustrate image, energy, tension, pattern, insight, and shape. Each chapter encourages review of previously introduced concepts.
- Readings in the book are vibrant, fresh, and popular among both students and their instructors, including works by contemporary authors such as Raymond Carver, Terrance Hayes, Pablo Neruda, Akhil Sharma, Kim Addonizio, Julia Koets, and Ira Sukrungruang.
- A wide range of lively work is presented, including short stories, flash fiction, essays, memoir, poems, prose poems, comics, monologue, and drama.
- Quotes from writers around the world provide inspiration for students and can be used as prompts for journal writing and/or discussion posts about the writing process — particularly helpful in online versions of the course, where building daily meaningful instructor presence is crucial.
New to This Edition
Writers on Writing feature for practical advice. New micro-interviews conducted by Heather Sellers with ten authors whose pieces are presented in the book can be found throughout the text. The interviews provide a special glimpse into each author’s particular writing process and prompt process awareness and self-reflection assignments for students.
Clearly stated course and chapter objectives. Especially helpful for designing online course modules, building a syllabus, assessing learning throughout the course, and deftly guiding students’ reading and learning, the objectives can be found at the beginning of each chapter, providing a visible framework for learning. Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, these objectives aid instructors in certifying their courses meet institutional standards and requirements.
Genre-based writing assignments. To improve the flexibility and usability of the text, each chapter now concludes with writing projects labeled by genre: experimental/hybrid, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and drama. Instructors can organize the course by writing strategy or by genre; students can easily see how writing strategies apply across genres.
New readings, chosen because of their proven success in providing inspiration for student writers.
- Innovative selections include flash and micro forms, as well as new speculative readings.
- New writers such as Thao Thai, Och Gonzalez, and Jarod Roselló are presented alongside beloved contemporary authors such as Ted Chiang, Natalie Diaz, and Ross Gay.
- Brief excerpts from student favorites, such as Joy Harjo’s “She Had Some Horses” and Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs provide new models for writing projects.
Fresh approaches to revision. The fourth edition presents a new set of approaches to this crucial and challenging part of the writing process. New Chapter Nine, “Shape,”, groups revision strategies and will help students where they struggle the most.
Supplemental materials at macmillanlearning.com. The Instructor’s Manual has been fully revised to support face-to-face and online teaching. It includes sample syllabi, additional writing projects, and suggestions for designing and leading a successful course. Instructors who wish to teach by genre will find various classroom-tested options for course design. Instructors who teach by writing strategy will find tips for organizing their course as well. Videos created by Heather Sellers help to support teaching and learning creative writing using the new edition.
"The Practice of Creative Writing stands out as an inspiring, engaging, and useful text for beginning creative writers. Heather Sellers manages to introduce core concepts and literary techniques with an emphasis on practice that is integral to building a multi-genre course without being overly prescriptive. Instructors can choose from a variety of contemporary literature selections and provide students with the models, writing prompts, and exercises that help them grow as creative writers."
— Kathleen McCoy, Adirondack CC, Queensbury"The Practice of Creative Writing by Heather Sellers is the most useful creative writing textbook on the market. It addresses student writers in an amiable, colloquial way and makes complex ideas about writing craft simple and approachable. The book is an enthusiastic invitation to students to engage the exciting, infinite possibilities of the art of creative writing."
— Scott Ward, Eckerd College"This text helps students think outside the boxes of genre to instead focus on the building blocks of creativity and the nuances of form and technique. By teaching writers to analyze literature as a careful balance of image, tension, energy, pattern, and insight, they can in turn understand how to employ the same elements in their own work in order to engage and move their readers."
— Dr. Courtney Huse Wika, Black Hills State University"Sellers text is very student friendly. It successfully helps the beginning creative writer into the writing field by making solid comparisons to other art fields they may be familiar with and utilize. It talks about writing in practical terms while not dazzling readers with literary terms for the sake of labelling."
— Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria College, Buffalo"This is my go-to text in intro to CW. Ive adopted it; Ive recommended it. Its a perfect balance of wit, humility, and intellect. Behind the words, you sense a real person--a writer--not a corporate shadow. Heather Sellers walks readers through the intricacies of creative writing with a lovely balance of humor and rigor."
— Jeffrey Newberry, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College"I really think this is an incredibly adroit text in that the writer writes with her audience well in mind. This responsiveness spans many aspects of the book, its structure, its content, its voice and style, even down to paragraph structure. There are many repetitions in the chapter sections and this great; when students don’t know how to read for main ideas, the repetitions aid in reinforcing their learning. The volume begins with students’ reading a graphic comic, something with which they are familiar, and then moves to approaching literary texts, something with which they are less familiar. It draws many analogies using music, again, something that students both know and care about. On these rhetorical levels, this is probably the best introduction to creative writing I’ve even read and used, and I’ve been teaching creative writing for 26 years."
— Scott Ward, Eckerd College"The literary selections are outstanding, representing a multicultural array of authors with contemporary relevance, high interest, and a mix of well-known and lesser known writers."
— Kathleen McCoy, Adirondack CC, Queensbury"I generally dont use or like textbooks, but this textbook caught my eye. This is largely because the author approaches creative writing like a practicing artist might, coaching students towards their best and deepest selves, offering surprising insights and exercises, building their close-reading muscles, encouraging honest and specific images and sentences. I love this about the book, and this is what distinguishes it for me."
— Maria Brandt, Monroe CC"The Practice of Creative Writing stands out from other creative writing textbooks because it focuses on critical craft principles - such as the use of sensory detail, writing to communicate tension and insight, and revision practices - over a rigid focus on form or progressing through forms. It allows the instructor the freedom to pair the textbook with as few or as many forms as they want to assign in their creative writing classes."
— Martha Webber, Cal State Fullerton"This is a creative writing textbook written by an accomplished and articulate WRITER, who understands the writing process and uses a teachable, effective approach for introducing students to writing in multiple genres."
— Patricia Francisco, Hamline University, St. Paul"Heather has selected an awesome collection of creative works that exemplify a variety of forms. A number of these shorter/quicker forms (e.g., flash fiction), are great for getting novice creative writers acclimated to the depth and temperature of the water."
— Bill Gary, Kentucky Community & Technical College System"This book takes a "personal trainer" approach to the practice of writing. It is a gentle, encouraging voice in the writers ear."
— Robert Cowser, St. Lawrence University
The Practice of Creative Writing
Fourth Edition| ©2021
Heather Sellers
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The Practice of Creative Writing
Fourth Edition| 2021
Heather Sellers
Table of Contents
*indicates new selection (please add this on the page)
Preface
Introduction
How The Practice of Creative Writing Works
Asking Generative Questions
Part One
FOUNDATIONS
1 Finding Focus
The Mind’s Eye
Subject as Focus
Developing Focus
Lack of Focus
*Neil Gaiman’s “8 Rules for Writing”
Writing Projects
Readings
*Jarod Rosello, Robot Camp
*Writers on Writing (Jarod Rosello)
*John Brehm, The Poems I Have Not Written
*Writers on Writing (John Brehm)
*Och Gonzalez, What I Do on My Terrace Is None of Your Business
Writers on Writing (Och Gonzalez)
2 Reading as a Writer
Tips for Reading as a Writer
To Read Is To Travel
Strategies for Close Reading
Genres: An Overview
Closely Reading Your Own Work
Reading Work By Peers
Reading to Write
WRITING PROJECTS
READINGS
Van Jordan, af•ter•glow
Sebastian Matthews, Buying Wine
*Lee Herrick, My California
*Writers on Writing (Lee Herrick)
*Ira Sukrungruang, Chop Suey
*Nancy Stolham, I Found Your Voodoo Doll on the Dance Floor After Last Call
Vincent Scarpa, I Go Back to Berryman’s
*Writers on Writing (Vincent Scarpa)
* Ted Chiang, The Great Silence
Marco Ramirez, I am not Batman
3 Creating from Components
Core Components of Creative Writing
Genre-Specific Components
Components of Narrative: Memoir, Creative Nonfiction, Fiction
Components of Poetry
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool
Components of Plays
WRITING PROJECTS
COMPONENTS WORKSHOP
READINGS
Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You
Terrance Hayes, Liner Notes for an Imaginary Playlist
Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Brenda Miller, Swerve
Writers on Writing (Brenda Miller)
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Part Two
STRATEGIES
4 Images
The Principles of Images
Creating with Images
A Word on Ideas
WRITING PROJECTS
IMAGES WORKSHOP
READINGS
*Ross Gay, Ode to Sleeping in My Clothes
Natalie Diaz, My Brother at 3 a.m.
Dylan Landis, In My Father’s Study upon His Death
Writers on Writing (Dylan Landis)
*Thao Thai, Counting Bats
Mary Robison, Pretty Ice
Akhil Sharma, Surrounded by Sleep
5 Energy
The Principles of Energy
Manipulating Energy
TROUBLESHOOTING ENERGY
WRITING PROJECTS
ENERGY WORKSHOP
READINGS
Betsy Sholl, Genealogy
Brian Turner, What Every Soldier Should Know
*Jamila Osman, Fluency
*Beth Ann Fennelly, One Doesn’t Always Wish to Converse on Airplanes
*Beth Ann Fennelly, Small Talk at Evanston General
*Beth Ann Fennelly, Why I’m Switching Salons
*Beth Ann Fennelly, Two Phone Conversations
Writers on Writing (Beth Ann Fennelly)
Brian Arundel, The Things I’ve Lost
Rick Moody, Boys
*Brenda Peynado, What We Lost
*Rebecca Roanhorse, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™
*Kristina Halvorson, Now We’re Really Getting Somewhere
6 Tension
The Principles of Tension
Maintaining Tension
Manipulating Tension
WRITING PROJECTS
TENSION WORKSHOP
READINGS
*Natalie Diaz, Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation
Jenifer Hixson, Where There’s Smoke
Rod Kessler, How to Touch a Bleeding Dog
Marisa Silver, What I Saw from Where I Stood
Jessica Shattuck, Bodies
Peter Morris, Pancakes
7 Pattern
Pattern by Ear
E. E. Cummings, (Me up at does)
Pattern by Eye
WRITING PROJECTS
PATTERN WORKSHOP
READINGS
Gregory Orr, The River
Randall Mann, Pantoum
*Edna St. Vincent Millay, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why
*Julie Azzam, How to Erase an Arab
*Writers on Writing (Julie Azzam)
*Ken Liu, Paper Menagerie
8 Insight
Reading for Insight
Principles of Insight
PRACTICING INSIGHT
Three Pitfalls
WRITING PROJECTS
INSIGHT WORKSHOP
READINGS
*Julia Koets, Boys
*Writers on Writing (Julia Koets)
* Pablo Neruda, Ode to My Suit
*Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses (part one)
*Dana Spiotta, Control
Brian Doyle, Two Hearts
Michael Cunningham, White Angel
9 Shape
Principles of Shape
Additional Techniques for Shaping Your Work
Pitfalls
Shaping a Story: A Writer at Work
EDITING AND PROOFREADING
WRITING PROJECTS
SHAPE WORKSHOP
Part Three
FORMS
10 Finding Form
Forms: Recipes for Writers
Creating a Portfolio of Forms
Abecedarius
Anaphora
Braid
Comics and Graphic Narratives
Flash
Ghazal
Journey
List
Monologue
Pantoum
Play/Screenplay
Sestina
Sonnet
Villanelle
Part Four
THE WRITING LIFE
11 Reaching Readers
Preparing to Publish
Live Readings
Literary Magazines: Print and Digital
Portfolios and Chapbooks
QUESTIONS TO ASK: Writing an Artist’s Statement
12 Writing Resources
Smart Searching
Social Media
Resources
Instruction in Specific Genres
Authors
Heather Sellers
Instructor Resources
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Instructor's Resource Manual for The Practice of Creative Writing (Online Only)
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The Practice of Creative Writing
Fourth Edition| 2021
Heather Sellers
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The Practice of Creative Writing
Fourth Edition| 2021
Heather Sellers
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