Write for Your Life
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- USD 4.99
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- USD 4.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this clarion call to pick up a pen and find yourself from “one of our most astute chroniclers of modern life” (The New York Times Book Review), #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen shows us how anyone can write, and why everyone should.
What really matters in life? What truly lasts in our hearts and minds? Where can we find community, history, humanity? In this lyrical new book, the answer is clear: through writing. This is a book for what Quindlen calls “civilians,” those who want to use the written word to become more human, more themselves.
Write for Your Life argues that there has never been a more important time to stop and record what we are thinking and feeling. Using examples from past, present, and future—from Anne Frank to Toni Morrison, from love letters written after World War II to journal reflections from nurses and doctors today—Write for Your Life vividly illuminates the ways in which writing connects us to ourselves and to those we cherish. Drawing on her personal experiences not just as a writer but as a mother and daughter, Quindlen makes the case that recording our daily lives in writing is essential.
When we write we not only look, we see; we not only react but reflect. Writing gives you something to hold onto in a changing world. “To write the present,” Quindlen says, “is to believe in the future.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Columnist Quindlen (Nanaville) encourages amateur writers to pick up their pencils in this inspirational if at times old-fashioned love letter to writing. Quindlen homes in on seven benefits of writing and provides anecdotes to illustrate each. For example, Quindlen finds in the diary of Anne Frank the merits of writing for self-discovery and posterity, even if one never intends to publish the work. Quindlen highlights the stories of others who have found unexpected benefits in writing, including doctors who write about their experiences working with patients in "parallel" medical charts, a practice that reportedly boosts doctors' ability to connect with those they are treating. Another anecdote tells of a California teacher who in the 1990s asked her "unteachable" students to keep journals, and the resulting stories of trauma, pain, and perseverance became the basis for the bestselling book The Freedom Writers Diary. Quindlen assures readers that the right way to write "is how you do it" and warns them not to worry about getting things right, just "get it written." The author's journalistic eye for story and detail breathes life into her literary philosophies, but her elegies for the pre-digital age of pen and paper come across as out of touch. Still, Quindlen makes a convincing case for writing when no one's watching.
