Award-winning musical dramatist and teacher David Spencer provides a guide-to-the-game that helps you negotiate aspects of the musical theatre business and more.

This inspirational guide for aspiring and experienced writers was originally published in 1997. Written in a friendly, hopeful, and gently humorous tone, it focuses on the creative process and emotional ups and downs of the creative life, providing insights into how to persist in the face of rejection, frustration, feelings of inadequacy, lack of support from loved ones, and more. It also offers practical how-to advice, from organizing your time so you actually sit down and write to reading as a writer. This ebook’s rerelease of The Writer’s Survival Guide includes a new introduction that discusses the origins of the book and how, in spite of the many changes in publishing and technology, it remains relevant today.

When your story gets stuck, the Writer Emergency Survival Guide has the tools you need to get you out safely. Fix plot holes. Resuscitate characters. Rethink your themes.This guide contains:- 30 illustrated journal pages- 30 day writing log- Tons of helpful suggestions to try

Take the initiative and be ready to survive! Could you survive the end of the world as we know it? The Ultimate Prepper's Survival Guide will set you on the path to learning all the skills you will need to survive full societal collapse. We live in precarious times, and sensible people all around the world are recognizing that preparedness could mean the difference between life and death. Author John Wesley, Rawles—one of the world’s leading survivalist experts—explains how to survive in the short term as society begins to collapse, and how to thrive in the long term. Practical, easy-to-follow instructions are included to instruct you on the preparations you can make today, as well as advice on the mental and emotional resilience required to help you not just cope but prosper in the new world.

From the acclaimed author of Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space—an authoritative and accessible guide to the most alluring and challenging phenomena of contemporary science. "[Levin will] take you on a safe black hole trip, an exciting travel story enjoyed from your chair’s event horizon.” —Boston Globe Through her writing, astrophysicist Janna Levin has focused on making the science she studies not just comprehensible but also, and perhaps more important, intriguing to the nonscientist. In this book, she helps us to understand and find delight in the black hole—perhaps the most opaque theoretical construct ever imagined by physicists—illustrated with original artwork by American painter and photographer Lia Halloran. Levin takes us on an evocative exploration of black holes, provoking us to imagine the visceral experience of a black hole encounter. She reveals the influence of black holes as they populate the universe, sculpt galaxies, and even infuse the whole expanse of reality that we inhabit. Lively, engaging, and utterly unique, Black Hole Survival Guide is not just informative—it is, as well, a wonderful read from first to last.

The rewards you can reap from exploring this amazing planet are incalculable. Every year, more and more of us are discovering the joy, the excitement, the sheer sense of adventure in roaming the world. But travelling, particularly to the more remote and volatile corners of the globe, can be a dangerous business. If you don't prepare properly - by looking for potential hazards and learning how best to deal with them - you may wish you'd never started out. Written by international security expert Lloyd Figgins, using his experience of over 80 countries, The Travel Survival Guide is a unique new travel guide and essential reading for anyone planning an overseas trip, whether on business, as a tourist or gap-year traveller. If you want no-nonsense, easy-to-follow, practical advice on how to recognise the warning signs, how to prevent problems and cope with emergencies (should they occur), this is the book for you.

Accessible, insightful and a must-have toolkit for all final year doctoral students, the founders of the ‘Thesis Boot Camp’ intensive writing programme show how to survive and thrive through the challenging final year of writing and submitting a thesis. Drawing on an understanding of the intellectual, professional, practical and personal elements of the doctorate to help readers gain insight into what it means to finish a PhD and how to get there, this book covers the common challenges and ways to resolve them. It includes advice on: Project management skills to plan, track, iterate and report on the complex task of bringing a multi-year research project to a successful close Personal effectiveness and self-care to support students to thrive in body, mind and relationships, including challenging supervisor relationships. The successful ‘generative’ writing processes which get writers into the zone and producing thousands of words; and then provides the skills to structure and polish those words to publishable quality. What it means to survive a PhD and consider multiple possible futures. Written for students in all disciplines, and relevant to university systems around the world, this unique book expertly guides students through the final 6–12 months of the thesis. The 'Insider Guides to Success in Academia' offers support and practical advice to doctoral students and early-career researchers. Covering the topics that really matter, but which often get overlooked, this indispensable series provides practical and realistic guidance to address many of the needs and challenges of trying to operate, and remain, in academia. These neat pocket guides fill specific and significant gaps in current literature. Each book offers insider perspectives on the often implicit rules of the game -- the things you need to know but usually aren't told by institutional postgraduate support, researcher development units, or supervisors -- and will address a practical topic that is key to career progression. They are essential reading for doctoral students, early-career researchers, supervisors, mentors, or anyone looking to launch or maintain their career in academia.

The Playwright's Survival Guide is written for both aspiring and established writers looking for an emotional, spiritual, or just plain practical connection back to what's important - the writing. It's a "how-to-be" book - with thoughts, stories of inspiration, a few tricks of the trade, a few outlets for venting frustrations, and a reassuring voice that speaks to all the doubts with an "I know. I've been there. This is what you do . . ." Gary Garrison demystifies the playwriting process, speaking honestly, poignantly, and with humor about the lessons he's learned along the way. He explores the issues playwrights face every day, including: inspiration criticism self-doubt relationships with teachers and mentors the art of self-promotion writer's block staying healthy in the art after your fingers are off the keyboard.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it's a good bet that at least half of those words relate to the picture's copyright status. Art historians, artists, and anyone who wants to use the images of others will find themselves awash in byzantine legal terms, constantly evolving copyright law, varying interpretations by museums and estates, and despair over the complexity of the whole situation. Here, on a white—not a high—horse, Susan Bielstein offers her decades of experience as an editor working with illustrated books. In doing so, she unsnarls the threads of permissions that have ensnared scholars, critics, and artists for years. Organized as a series of “takes” that range from short sidebars to extended discussions, Permissions, A Survival Guide explores intellectual property law as it pertains to visual imagery. How can you determine whether an artwork is copyrighted? How do you procure a high-quality reproduction of an image? What does “fair use” really mean? Is it ever legitimate to use the work of an artist without permission? Bielstein discusses the many uncertainties that plague writers who work with images in this highly visual age, and she does so based on her years navigating precisely these issues. As an editor who has hired a photographer to shoot an incredibly obscure work in the Italian mountains (a plan that backfired hilariously), who has tried to reason with artists' estates in languages she doesn't speak, and who has spent her time in the archival trenches, she offers a snappy and humane guide to this difficult terrain. Filled with anecdotes, asides, and real courage, Permissions, A Survival Guide is a unique handbook that anyone working in the visual arts will find invaluable, if not indispensable.