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  • The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life's Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry by Zelda Lockhart book cover
  • The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life's Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry by Zelda Lockhart book cover
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The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life's Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry

by Zelda Lockhart

Turning personal experience into manuscript material

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Awards & Recognition

  • Critical praise

    Praise from Dorothy Allison

    Dorothy Allison praises the book, saying it should come with a warning label because readers will need to go dee...

AlbakiReads Editorial

Turning personal experience into manuscript material

Zelda Lockhart’s guide connects personal experience with the practical work of shaping a full-length manuscript in literary fiction, memoir, or poetry. It combines reflective exercises—intended to help writers work through internal obstacles and develop material from an impactful life event—with attention to craft and to writing a resolution and outcome. Lockhart’s rough drafts and excerpts from published writing are also included, offering examples alongside the exercises. The book frames manuscript-making as a process that draws on emotional, psychological, and spiritual experience as well as writing practice.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Writers, with or without prior experience, who want to develop a full-length manuscript.
  • People interested in shaping a significant life experience into literary fiction, memoir, or poetry.
  • Writers who value guided exercises and examples as part of a creative process.

Themes

Writing from life experienceCreative writing exercisesManuscript developmentCraft in fiction, memoir, and poetry

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

"This book should come with a warning label: 'Be ready, you are going to have to go deeper than you ever imagined.'" Dorothy Allison Author of Bastard Out of Carolina

Utilize your emotional, psychological, and spiritual self to produce the first draft of a full-length manuscript. This book helps you take the stuff that has been making a mess of your life and use it instead to make art, harmonized with craft. It acts as creative companion for individuals (those with or without writing experience) as they journey through the sharing of an impactful event in life, do exercises that help them transform internal obstacles into external gifts, and then write resolution and outcome. Lockhart's own rough drafts and excerpts from published fiction, memoir, and poetry of writers like Toi Derricotte, Helena Mar

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