Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book

by Mary Carroll Moore

Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Research

400 pages, Paperback

First published March 16, 2011

About the author

Mary Carroll Moore is the Amazon-bestselling and award-winning author of three novels: A Woman's Guide to Search & Rescue (2023), Last Bets (2024), and the PEN/Faulkner-nominated young adult novel, Qualities of Light (2009). Her writing has been featured on NPR and in the New York Times. She received her MFA from Goddard College and has taught throughout the US and abroad at various writing schools and universities since 1998. Her writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “Reader’s Choice” award.

Before moving into fiction, she worked as a chef, a cooking-school owner, a cookbook author, and a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her first cookbook won a Julia Child/IACP award. Over two hundred of her essays, stories, and articles have appeared in magazines and literary journals.

She lives in New Hampshire with her family.

Reviews

[Katherine Dering · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your Book Starts Here provides tangible, useful advice for every step of the writing process, from gathering inspiration to managing pacing, from searching the unconscious for themes to working out rough chapter transitions. The author recognizes the iterative nature of writing; various chapters deal specifically with getting out those first inspired blazing hot pages or working out scenes and dialogue or developing well-rounded characters. And most of all,with Mry's creative "W," it helps with overall organization, recognizing gaps, duplications or misplacements that will slow the book's movement.

Some people are born geniuses, like Beethoven or Jane Austen. I needed help. And I believe the success of my book Shot in the Head, is at least partly due to things I learned from Mary Caroll Moore.

I have a shelf full of writing advice books that I've collected over the years. Most of them, I've read the first twenty pages, skipped through a few more chapters at random, and then thought, yeah, but...

Yeah but, how do I actually do all this? Your Book Starts Here tells us.

With the exception of a few classics like Joseph Campbell, the rest of my writing advice books are being recycled.

ps. I have used exercises from this book to teach memoir writing and my students loved them.

[Mindy Greiling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential primer for writing a book by an author who makes herself vulnerable while being exceptionally helpful.

[Michelle Morrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only took me a year to get through, off and on, putting it down for months at a time, but finally finished. I have used this as a consulting resource primarily, picking it back up in between writing when I needed direction or inspiration. Great information, tips, and techniques. Easy to absorb. Lots of optional exercises to do also.

[Stan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I have known Mary for years; we are friends. But given that, she is recognized as a Master teacher of writing and this is her textbook for crafting your opus.

It is nothing if not thorough. Mary knows how to ask all the right questions and how to help you get your material organized. Her directions are worth following but be prepared to do some work if you want to do the job right.

I really can't recommend this book highly enough. I love to write and have read much of the literature on the subject and I daresay this book is as good as it gets if you are looking for some help writing. I wish I had the conscientiousness to follow all her directions.

There is a nice balance of right and left brained exercises here. I tend to be very right brained and resist the analysis stuff. But it is helpful and worthwhile if you have the stomach for it :) Go for it!

[Heidi Fettig Parton · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever thought people are born writers, think again. It takes lots of practice and I'm still learning. With this book, however, a writer's practice is guided carefully and methodically towards developing the skills it takes to write an engaging book. Practical, easy-to-follow steps build on each other from chapter to chapter, assisting writers in all genres to develop a mere glimpse of an idea into a book-length project.

Read this book from cover to cover, then keep it on your bookshelf to pull out whenever you get stuck or even just need a few writing exercises to warm up for a day (or hour) of writing.

[Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I wanted to write a memoir, I had no idea how to get started. Mary Carroll Moore's book gave me a step by step way to proceed that works like magic! Her experience as an editor and book writer herself offer a rare combination of skill and understanding about what new writers need. I highly recommend Your Book Starts Here.

[Jodie Sinclair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved all the twists and turns. Well written.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many writing books for beginners focus on technique--voice, point-of-view, word choice, etc. Mary Carroll Moore's book is more about inspiring the beginning writer to organize and execute a book, whether fiction, memoir, or nonfiction. She recognizes the tremendous labor a book is--how easy it is to get off track and give up. Some chapters are still dedicated to things like voice, but most of the book is an inspirational message for doing it--beginning and finishing a book.

Moore is also well known for teaching the three-act structure and storyboarding (or the W plot). I originally purchased this book with these chapters in mind. I'd seen her videos on YouTube and wanted to own her lectures on these topics.

This book is easy to read--would be great for undergraduate writers--also graduate students struggling with writers' block. She's been teaching for years and illustrates the book with many useful case examples.

[Layla Sabourian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an excellent resource for those unsure of how to begin writing a book. It provides motivation and a clear, step-by-step guide to getting started, covering the fundamentals of the writing process. However, it falls short in offering concrete advice on how to sell a book or navigate the publishing industry, leaving readers without a clear path to securing a publisher.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely helpful and tangible with tips and exercises. Mary's book helped me with structure, themes, storylines, and character development, specifically the tension between a character's inner and outer lives. I highly recommend this book to anyone studying the craft of writing.

[Kayla Randolph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear, helpful, and encouraging. The personal anecdotes add believability and build trust between the reader and the author.

As an editor, it provided great ideas to implement in editorial coaching exercises for an author I was working with.

[Judy Ring · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are working on a book, thinking about working on a book...dream of working on a book or just enjoy the process of writing. I recommend this book!

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better books on writing. The questions after each chapter were great for getting you thinking differently about what you are writing.

[Irene Frielich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this as a reference and completed many (many) of the exercises to help me hone my own writing.

[Jennifer Louden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great smart overview of how to write a book. Comprehensive and gives some ideas that I've never encountered before.