Based on a top writers' workshop, Immediate Fiction covers the entire process of writing from manuscript preparation and time management, to finding an idea, getting words on the page staying unblocked, and submitting to agents and publishers. With insightful tips and advice, Jerry Cleaver helps writers: manage doubts, fears, blocks, and panic all while helping to develop their writing in minutes a day. Anyone who wants to write anything from a short story to a screenplay will find practical help in this book.

Reviews

The creator of the Writer's Loft, an independent writer's workshop in Chicago, Cleaver has been coaching amateur writers into print for 20 years. Here he presents the basic outline of his course. In a breezy, informal, and personal manner, Cleaver shares his early difficulties and ultimate breakthrough, which led to his success as both writer and teacher. Crafting a story from idea through marketing takes skill, discipline, and talent. Cleaver, like so many of his ilk, encourages the development of all three through practice and daily writing exercises. He discusses self-editing, rewriting, time management, and the basics of plot and story. There's not much new here, but the price of the book is a bargain compared with the online course offered at www.immediatefiction.com. Buy where there is an insatiable need for tips on how to write. Stephen King's On Writing is still the best of the recent crop. Denise S. Sticha, Murrysville Community Lib., PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Praise for "Immediate Fiction" and Jerry Cleaver

"Plainly gifted."
- C. Michael Curtis, senior editor, "The Atlantic Monthly"

"The best there is."
- Michael Harvey, screenwriter/filmmaker, Emmy Award winner, and 1999 Academy Award nominee for Eyewitness

"A true story master."
- Bernard Sabbath, Broadway playwright, author of "The Boys in Autumn"

"I recommend it to everyone who writes."
- Linda Lael Miller, author of eight "New York Times" bestsellers

Adages ("Want + obstacle = conflict"), advice ("Make all of your story worth showing") and even an assortment of solitary words author Jerry Cleaver considers important ("fear," "worry," "hope") stand out in boldfaced type on the pages of Immediate Fiction: A Complete Writing Course. Cleaver, who founded the Chicago writers' workshop the Writers' Loft and has ghostwritten several books, insists that all one needs to be a successful writer is the "right tools" (while painting may require "inborn talent," writing doesn't) and in enthusiastic prose, he describes those tools one by one. With its writing exercises, time management hints and endlessly jocular encouragement, this volume will please many a would-be Welty or Wilde. (St. Martin's, $24.95 304p ISBN 0-312-28716-X) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.