Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers

<i>Use Your Words</i> introduces the art of creative nonfiction to women who want to give written expression to their lives as mothers. Written by award-winning teacher and writer Kate Hopper this book will help women find the heart of their writing, learn to use motherhood as a lens through which to write the world, and turn their stories of motherhood into art. <br/><br/><i>Use Your Words</i> takes the approach that creative writing can be taught, and this underscores each chapter. When students learn to read like writers, to notice how a piece is put together, and to question the choices a writer makes, they begin to think like writers. When they learn to ground their writing in concrete, sensory details and begin to understand how to create believable characters and realistic dialogue, their own writing improves. <br/><br/>Each chapter of <i>Use Your Words</i> focuses on an element of the craft and contains a lecture, a published essay, and writing exercises that will serve as jumping-off points for the readers’ own writing. Chapter topics include: the importance of using concrete details, an overview of creative nonfiction as a genre, character development, voice, humor, tense, writing the “hard stuff,” reflection and back-story, structure, revision, and publishing. The content of each lecture is aligned with the essay/poem in that chapter to help readers more easily grasp the elements of writing being discussed. Together the chapters provide a unique opportunity for writing mothers to learn and grow their craft.