"There is no better book than Word Painting and no better teacher than Rebecca McClanahan to illustrate how memory and observation are shaped into language that is lively and alive. McClanahan offers brilliant and helpful examples of how sensory detail, intimate moments, characterization, atmosphere, mood, and metaphor combine to create poems, stories, and essays that lift from the page and soar into the reader's imagination. If you want to be a better writer, you need to read this book." --Dinty W. Moore, author of Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction " Word Painting is both a joy to read and terrifically useful, whether you are working on your first short story or your fifth novel. Eloquent, practical, and deeply wise, Rebecca McClanahan reveals how to move beyond flat description into writing full of music, color, and surprise, and then how to enliven character, setting, and plot. Brushstroke by brushstroke, note by note, she vividly demonstrates the ways technique leads to art and, most importantly, the way art teaches us to become 'beholders' of the world. By the time I reached the third chapter I was quoting whole passages to my students, having already taken copious notes for myself.

This is a writing guide full of sense and sensibility, and a work of art in itself." --Suzanne Berne, novelist and winner of the Orange Prize for fiction.