About The Book Doctor
Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog, No One You Know, Dream of the Blue Room, and the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. She has taught in the MFA programs in creative writing at the University of San Francisco, California College of the Arts, St. Mary's College of Moraga, and Bowling Green State University. In Spring of 2012, she will hold the CJ Chair at Notre Dame de Namur University. She is the publisher of Fiction Attic Press.
What Can the Book Doctor Do For You?
If you want to be a writer, the first thing to do is write every day. The Guided Workbooks for Writers are designed to inspire, enlighten, and gently kick you in the pantalones. No more, “I’m gonna write that book someday, I swear.” If you don’t know what you want to write, Where Stories Begin can help you find your subject. The workbooks are a fun, low-cost way to explore writing and figure out where you want to go with it.
If you already have a novel, manuscript consultation will help you get it in great shape. You can opt for feedback on just the first fifty pages–which is the most important part of the novel in terms of finding an agent or publisher–or you can request a full read and critique of your entire manuscript.
Join a writing class! Online classes are great for meeting other writers. The weekly assignments give you manageable goals, and the lectures are filled with really useful information about narrative craft. Occasionally, I offer classes in person as well, which feature interesting, creative, fun people eating bon-bons, drinking coffee, and scribbling away in comfy chairs.
Don’t we all? Sign up. I will send you some free downloads, and every now and then you’ll receive an email with new dates for classes and such. I will not spam you, Girls in Action Honor.
Girls in Action is the Southern Baptist answer to Girl Scouts; while I’m sure Girls in Action is a worthy and good-citizen-making organization, all I know is that it co-opted the Wednesday nights of my childhood, so that I wasn’t able to watch Charley’s Angels. If it weren’t for Girls in Action, I might never have developed a keen sense of guilt, injustice, and deprivation. Which is to say I might never have become a writer.
Where did you get that pretty orange typewriter on the menu bar?
This is a digital file of an original illustration by Ryan Conners. You can find other great work by Ryan, including illustrations of cats, cars, nuns, and buses, at her etsy shop, KilkennycatArt
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