A collection of cures for writer's block, plotting and characterization issues, and other ailments writers face when completing a novel or memoir, prescribed by the director of creative writing at Ohio University. People want to write the book they know is inside of them, but they run into stumbling blocks that trouble everyone from beginners to seasoned writers. Drawing on his years of teaching at both the university level and at writing workshops across the country, Professor Dinty W. Moore dons his book-doctor hat to present an authoritative guide to curing the issues that truly plague writers at all levels. His hard-hitting handbook provides inspiring solutions for diagnoses such as character anemia, flat plot, and silent voice, and is peppered with flashes of Moore's signature wit and unique take on the writing life.

The Story Cure: A Book Doctor's Pain-Free Guide to Finishing Your Novel or Memoir

Reference

Moore, Dinty W.

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed

Between Panic and Desire (American Lives)

“Insouciant” and “irreverent” are the sort of words that come up in reviews of Dinty W. Moore’s books—and, invariably, “hilarious.” Between Panic and Desire, named after two towns in Pennsylvania, finds Moore at the top of his astutely funny form. A book that could be named after one of its chapters, “A Post-Nixon, Post-panic, Post-modern, Post-mortem,” this collection is an unconventional memoir of one man and his culture, which also happens to be our own. Blending narrative and quizzes, memory and numerology, and imagined interviews and conversations with dead presidents on TV, the book dizzily documents the disorienting experience of growing up in a postmodern world. Here we see how the major events in the author’s early life—the Kennedy assassination, Nixon’s resignation, watching Father Knows Best, and dropping acid atop the World Trade Center, to name a few—shaped the way he sees events both global and personal today. More to the point, we see how these events shaped, and possibly even distorted, today’s world for all of us who spent our formative years in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. A curious meditation on family and bereavement, longing and fear, self-loathing and desire, Between Panic and Desire unfolds in kaleidoscopic forms—a coroner’s report, a TV movie script, a Zen koan—aptly reflecting the emergence of a fractured virtual America.

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

University Of Nebraska Press

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Bison Books

Toothpick Men: Short Stories

Literature & Fiction

Mammoth Pr Inc

Dante published his ambitious and unusual poem, Divine Comedy, more than seven hundred years ago. In the ensuing centuries countless retellings, innumerable adaptations, tens of thousands of fiery sermons from Catholic bishops and Baptist preachers, all those New Yorker cartoons, and masterpieces of European art have afforded Dante's fictional apparition of hell unending attention and credibility. Dinty W. Moore did not buy in. Moore started questioning religion at a young age, quizzing the nuns in his Catholic school, and has been questioning it ever since. Yet after years of Catholic school, religious guilt, and persistent cultural conditioning, Moore still can't shake the feelings of inadequacy, and asks: What would the world be like if eternal damnation was not hanging constantly over our sheepish heads? Why do we persist in believing a myth that merely makes us miserable? In To Hell with It, Moore reflects on and pokes fun at the over-seriousness of religion in various texts, combining narratives of his everyday life, reflections on his childhood, and religion's influence on contemporary culture and society. &nbsp;

To Hell with It: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante's Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno (American Lives)

When Dinty Moore was fifteen and on a Catholic Youth retreat weekend at a monastery in upstate New York, he thought for a brief moment he might grow up to be a priest. Instead, over the years, he lost his faith. "Twenty-five years later, I found myself at the doorway of a different monastery," Moore writes. " And the monks? Well, this time the monks were Buddhists."The Accidental Buddhist is the funny, provocative story of how Dinty Moore, as American as Huckleberry Finn, went looking for the faith he'd lost in what might seem the most unlikely of places: the ancient Eastern tradition of Buddhism. Like George Plimpton venturing into the world of professional sports, Dinty Moore enters the retreat centers, zendos, and meditation halls that have been taking root in every corner of America.Moore takes the time to see what Buddhism has to offer the harried, hassled American of the new century.  He explores the different varieties of American Buddhism, attends rallies, even tracks down and questions the Dalai Lama. In the process, much to his own surprise, he finds himself fascinated and moved by what he encounters.For anyone who has wondered about the gorwing visibility of Buddhism, Dinty Moore demystifies and explains the contradictions and concepts of this most mystic-seeming of religious traditions, while putting it into an American context. Those already interested in Buddhism will find The Accidental Buddhist a plain-spoken, insightful look at the dharma in America.

The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment and Sitting Still

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

MacMillan Audio

A skeptic by nature, a writer and teacher more at home with ballpoint pens than computer programs, Dinty W. Moore wanted to find out for himself if the much-touted Internet and the electronic culture it has spawned is really going to be the Next Big Thing, or whether it's the emperor's new clothes. This is not a how-to guide, a giddy net-head's online magical mystery tour, or a binaries-in-the-sky futurist treatise. Instead, this book tells it like it is about the Internet. Anyone who's asked, Who's there? What am I missing? and What is it all about? will find Moore's good-natured skepticism a welcome break from the explosion of wide-eyed techno-hype raging all around us. "Moore is far and away the best pure writer of the 'Wired School.' He's like the Stage Manager poking his head in around the set of 'Our Town.' Funny that it took the arrival of this commonsensical outsider to finally put a real human face on the digital world."--San Jose Mercury-News.

The Emperor's Virtual Clothes: The Naked Truth About Internet Culture

Computers & Technology

Networking & Cloud Computing

Algonquin Books

THE ACCIDENTAL BUDDHIST is the funny, provocative story of how Dinty Moore went looking for the faith he'd lost in what might seem the most unlikely of places: the ancient Eastern tradition of Buddhism. Moore demystifies and explains the contradictions and concepts of this most mystic-seeming of religious traditions. This plain-spoken, insightful look at the dharma in America will fascinate anyone curious about the wisdom of other cultures and other religions. "Sure of foot in complex terrain, and packing a blessedly down-to-earth sense of humor, Dinty Moore is the perfect scout for the new frontiers of American Buddhism."--Rodger Kamenetz, author of THE JEW IN THE LOTUS and STALKING ELIJAH.

The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still

Award winning essayist Scott Russell Sanders once compared the art of essay writing to "the pursuit of mental rabbits"a rambling through thickets of thought in search of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth. While some people persist in the belief that essays are stuffy and antiquated, the truth is that the personal essay is an ever-changing creative medium that provides an ideal vehicle for satisfying the human urge to document truths as we experience them and share them with othersto capture a bit of life on paper. Crafting the Personal Essay is designed to help you explore the flexibility and power of the personal essay in your own writing. This hands-on, creativity-expanding guide will help you infuse your nonfiction with honesty, personality, and energy. You'll discover: • An exploration of the basics of essay writing • Ways to step back and scrutinize your experiences in order to separate out what may be fresh, powerful, surprising or fascinating to a reader • How to move past private "journaling" and write for an audience • How to write eight different types of essays including memoir, travel, humor, and nature essays among others • Instruction for revision and strategies for getting published Brimming with helpful examples, exercises, and sample essays, this indispensable guide will help your personal essays transcend the merely private to become powerfully universal.

Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

Penguin Publishing Group

Fiction. Short Stories. With subjects ranging from gun-wielding therapists to drunk taxidermists, Moore's exploration of human nature in both its humdrum and its hilarity surely reflects his work experience as a documentary filmmaker, professional modern dancer, wire service journalist, and zookeeper. His prose is sharp, his characters endearing, and his wit always on target.

Toothpick Men (Revised Edition)

Mammoth Books

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Books by Moore, Dinty W.