Still Writing
The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers and everyone in between.”—Jennifer Egan
From Dani Shapiro, bestselling author of Devotion and Slow Motion, comes a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling. At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Still Writing is an intimate companion to living a creative life. Writers—and anyone with an artistic temperament—will find inspiration and comfort in these pages. Offering lessons learned over twenty years of teaching and writing, Shapiro shares her own revealing insights to weave an indispensable almanac for modern writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this hybrid guide, meditation, and memoir, novelist and memoirist Shapiro (Devotion) shares thoughts and strategies on the act of writing and the writing life. Focusing on the creative process itself, Shapiro divides her book into three parts Beginnings, Middles, and Ends and sprinkles thoughts in from all corners. For example, "Beginnings" contains ideas on how to begin a piece, as well as how to shore up self-confidence when young and just starting out. Unfortunately, the book suffers from a dearth of specifics in relation to craft. Concrete nuggets, such as an anecdote about unconsciously overusing the word "muffled" a repetition Shapiro thinks indicates a lack of closeness to her characters are the exception, not the rule. More prevalent are inspirational statements such as: "I reach for treasures in this underwater landscape. Ones that only I can see.... Courage is all about feeling the fear and doing it anyway." Many of the clich s do contain truth "It is the job of the writer to say, look at that. To point. To shine a light" but little in the book distinguishes it from a crowded field.
