Amazon.com Review
For Madeleine L'Engle, writing is as connected to her Christian faith as breathing is to air.
Madeleine L'Engle {Herself} comprises hundreds of L'Engle's reflections on writing, most shorter than a page and many illustrating her equal devotions to writing and prayer. L'Engle believes in collaborating with the subconscious mind. She believes that what you need for a work will come to you. She believes not in writing for children, but in retaining a childlike mind. And she believes it is her job to serve her work (though she claims frequently that she has "never served a work as it ought to be served"). She listens to the book she is writing, L'Engle says, just as she tries to listen in prayer. "If the book tells me to do something completely unexpected, I heed it; the book is usually right." But don't think this means that the work will write itself, and don't wait around to be inspired. "Inspiration comes during work," says the author, "not before it."
--Jane Steinberg
Review
"Madeleine L'Engle is one of the wise women not only of our time but of the ages. She would be comfortable in the company of Sappho and Sophocles, Dante and Chaucer, MacDonald and Dostoevsky, and they would rejoice in hers. She understands, as they did, that, confronted by the mysteries at the heart of the cosmos--the mysteries of union and separation, of progress and retreat, of good and evil--one must enlist in the struggle with all one's might and at the same time bow in awe before the unspeakable beauty and pain and all that is inexplicable."
--Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization, The Gifts of the Jews, and Desire of the Everlasting Hills
"Although it would be impossible to distill into one volume all of Madeleine L'Engle's wisdom about writing, this book comes close to doing just that. The selections address the whole writing life and capture those memorable expressions that are truly Madeleine. An inspiring and helpful resource--suitable for any writer at any stage of development."
--Vinita Hampton Wright, author of Grace at Bender Springs
and Velma Still Cooks in Leeway
"This is a work that could only have come from Madeleine L'Engle. She is one of the few writers who has married the life of faith and the life of art together so beautifully. There are not many literary heroes among us, and if ever there was one, it is her. Within L'Engle's reflections on the mystery and the craft of writing there is more than enough wisdom to help those of us who read it to become far better writers than we might have been otherwise. Sometimes when you read a great writer when they write about the art of craft itself, you want to retire immediately and become a plumber. This book made me want to pick up my pen and go back to work, and to work harder than I ever have before. That is no small gift."
--Robert Benson, author of Between the Dreaming and the Coming True
and Living Prayer
