Are you working on your acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay as we speak? Is there a draft copy of the Next Great American Novel hidden away on your hard drive? Do you secretly harbor Walter Mitty-esque fantasies about chucking your conventional career for the unpredictable, yet sometimes glamorous, world of freelance writing? Of course you do! You’ve got big dreams. You want fame!
Well, I hear fame costs…but the Carnegie Library’s collection of support materials for creative writers of all stripes can help you move a little closer to your goals, without a huge investment of start-up capital. Here’s a sample of the kinds of materials we provide:
- Winding Roads: Exercises in Writing Creative Nonfiction
- Virginia Woolf Writers’ Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing
- Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer
- See Jane Write: A Girl’s Guide to Writing Chick Lit
- Pep Talks, Warnings and Screeds: Indispensable Wisdom and Cautionary Advice for Writers
- Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers
- The Path to Publication series
We also make sure to keep copies of several key writers’ tools at the second floor reference desk. These include the most recent editions of Writer’s Market, Poet’s Market*, and Literary Market Place. Why not treat yourself to an afternoon at the library doing research, and save your hard-earned cash for that congratulatory round of drinks you plan to buy when your brilliant screenplay finally gets picked up by a major media mogul?
Obviously we can’t guarantee you fame, fortune, or a seat next to David Hyde Pierce at the Tonys. We can, however, provide the tools and the atmosphere you’ll need to at least get going in the right direction.
Dream on, creative writers. We can’t wait to say we knew you when.
–Leigh Anne
*Fret not, folks – we’d love it if you’d come sit a spell, but if you absolutely can’t, we do carry circulating back issues of these publications. Just make sure to double-check contact information before you submit, lest your heartbreaking work of staggering genius go to an incorrect address.
Eleventh Stack 