This may come as a shock, but brilliant writing and clever wordplay do not a published author make. True, you’ll actually have to write if you want to be a writer, but ultimately literary success is about much more than putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys). Before you snap your pencil in half with frustration, please consider the advice writer, teacher, and self-made lit star Ariel Gore offers in this useful guide to realizing your literary dreams.
If you find yourself writing when you should be sleeping and scribbling notes on odd pieces of paper at every stoplight, you might as well enjoy the fruits of your labor. How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead is an irreverent yet practical guide that combines solid writing advice with guerrilla marketing and promotion techniques guaranteed to launch you into print—and into the limelight. You’ll learn how to:
• Reimagine yourself as a buzz-worthy artist and entrepreneur • Get your work and your name out in the world where other people can read it • Be an anthology slut and a brazen self-promoter • Apply real-world advice and experience from lit stars like Dave Barry, Susie Bright, and Dave Eggers to your own career
Cheaper than an M.F.A. but just as informative, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead is your catapult to lit stardom. Just don’t forget to thank Ariel Gore for her inspiring, hands-on plan in the acknowledgments page of your first novel!
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Ariel Gore is the author of The Hip Mama Survival Guide, The Mother Trip, and Atlas of the Human Heart, as well as the novel The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.
Born on the Monterey Peninsula and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ariel Gore spent the years she was supposed to be in high school as an international bag lady traveling through Asia and Europe. She returned to California at age 19, baby in tow.
Following her misspent youth, she graduated from Mills College and earned a master's degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley.
In 1993, she founded of Hip Mama, an award-winning parenting zine covering the culture and politics of motherhood. Widely credited with launching maternal feminism, the New Yorker said, "It's the quality of the writing that sets Hip Mama apart."
Ariel's pregnancy and parenting books, The Hip Mama Survival Guide (Hyperion, 1998), The Mother Trip (Seal Press, 2000), and Whatever, Mom (Seal Press, 2004), have been called "delightful" (Glamour), "Terrific and important" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "revolutionary" (The Seattle Times).
Her lyrical teenage memoir, Atlas of the Human Heart (Seal Press, 2003), was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. The Utne Reader says: "Ariel Gore's transformation from globetrotting teenager to the hippest of mamas reads like a movie script about a Gen-X slacker following her bliss to unlikely success."
Her novel, The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show (HarperOne, 2006), was featured on MTV and was a BookSense pick praised by the Los Angeles Times as "Beguiling" and highly recommended by Library Journal as "a savvy rebuke of religious bigotry and a fun, fast, memorable read."
Her guide to writing and the creative life, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead (Three Rivers, 2007) was praised by Booklist as "The snappiest, most useful books a writer for hire is likely to read."
She was named one of "20 Under 30" influential women by Working Woman Magazine and called "conservative Americva's worst nightmare" by San Jose Mercury News. She debated Newt Gingrich on MTV and is a sought-after expert on creativity and women's issues interviewed on NPR and Life & Style as well as CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and MTV news.
Ariel's essays, articles, and short stories have appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and periodicals including the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, Salon, Parenting, and Utne, as well as in anthologies including Wild Child (Seal Press, 1999), the American Book Award-winning Mothers Who Think (Washington Square Press, 2000), Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (Seal Press, 2001), Because I Said So (HarperCollins, 2005), Lost On Purpose (Seal press, 2005), and Portland Noir (Akashic Books, 2009).
Her latest book, Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, is forthcoming from Farrar Straus Giroux. She lives in Portland Oregon with her partner Maria and her son Maximilian.
Ariel Gore is The Indiana Jones of literature. --Chuckpalahniuk.net
I wish this book had been written several years ago, when I first started my writing career. Ariel Gore's wit and wisdom could have spared me a lot of error and grief. How to Be a Famous Writer Before You're Dead is a breezy and informal guide for the writer looking for that first publishing score. Using her own experiences, as well as those of other writers, comedians, and entertainers, Gore speaks to the reader as if to an old friend and "tells it like it is." Launching a writing career is a scary, but rewarding, endeavor. Gore's encouragement and practical advice should inspire any first-time writer to keep at it. Hell, her book inspired me, even after five books of my own; after all, I'm not dead yet.
Got a postcard at school advertising a book on journalism. Before I tossed it (I'm retiring -- what do I need another book on journalism for?) I turned it over. There was a picture of Ariel Gore's book, with a brief blurb. I was intrigued and ordered it via amazon when I got home. What a gift to myself it turned out to be. I needed this boost. I've wanted to write for years, and resigned myself to the comments written on students' papers and my own online forum. After reading just the first couple of chapters, I know there are no excuses. I consider this book a godsend. Fun to read, beautifully written, wise and wonderful. Thank you, Ariel Gore!
It's funny, it's true, it's irreverent, and it's one of the best new books on writing and publishing available. (Literary snobs won't agree, but who asked them?) I've got three shelves crammed with writing books, and while most are pretty good, they all offer the same safe advice. Gore stresses the importance of marketing and promoting yourself and getting your stuff OUT THERE -- even if it means self-publishing your poems on a copy machine or posting a humor column in the PTA newsletter. While Gore's clear, take-no-prisoners style will appeal mostly to the young and the hip, I'm recommending this book to everyone in my writing workshops, no matter how old (or un-hip) they are. -Cindy La Ferle
