Customer Reviews

One Continuous Mistake : Four Noble Truths for Writers

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4 star:		(2)
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Gail Sher is a master baker, author of the inspirational 'From A Baker's Kitchen', which like the better known 'Tassajara Bread Book' describes less a set of recipes than a way of life.

The same can be said of 'One Continuous Mistake'. With writing as with baking, what is offered is not a set of prescriptive guidelines, for this is not a simplistic 'how-to' manual. Rather this is a highly accessible and attractive collection of insights into what it is to be a writer.

Sher is a member of the San Francisco Zen Center, and her approach is guided by an interpretation of Zen principles. For her, writing, like meditation, is a 'practice'. The path is itself the destination.

I would take issue with the Amazon review posted here, which says, 'Though there are a few writing exercises here, this is less a workbook than a series of meditations on how to be a writer.' Actually there are plenty of 'exercises' if you want them. For instance, the book is particularly helpful in guiding the reader through the writing of haiku (short poems)as a way into writing. Sher's approach is intensely practical. She proposes 'four noble truths' of writing, of which the first is 'writers write'! However, rather than haranguing readers into despair over the paucity of our own written words, she invites us to see how exactly the writing life can become for us immesurably enriching.

Actually, there is another book on a similar theme - writing as interpreted by a Zen perspective - and it's called 'Writing Down The Bones' by Natalie Goldberg. Don't ask me to choose between them. Read them both. After all, writers need all the friends they can get.

This book is concise and insightful. The truths it illustrates are applicable to, not only writing, but almost any other creative endeavor imaginable. Simply replace the word "writing" with "painting" or "design" or whatever interest captivates you. While I read, I found I had to keep my journal beside me to record passages that I didn't want to forget - there were many.

I was so inspired after reading the first couple pages of "One Continuous Mistake" that I had to stop reading to go about the business of writing (of all things).

Gail Sher has merged her years of experience as a writing teacher (who has clearly listened to the issues her students confronted) with her years of practicing, studying and teaching Zen Buddhism to make a very simple demystifying guidebook to a writing life. If you are looking for a workbook, there are wonderful exercises and a very useful guide to writing haikus in the appendix. But even more, if you aren't looking for ideas about the specific "what" or "how" of writing, but are concerned with the continual challenge of maintaining a writing life, this is a great book to have on hand. I plan to re-read this book throughout my writing life and give it as a gift to all my writerly friends.

I opened this book intending to browse the first few pages. Instead, I finished the book and went right to work writing. I've never thought of myself as a an actual "writer," but now I do! She blows away the concept of "writer's block," inspiring the reader with clear and simple suggestions for writing as a daily process. Even if you are NOT interested in writing, chances are that you will be after reading this book. Her prose resonates like poetry.

This short, pithy book will guide you on a journey of thought and exploration. The principles within can be applied to more than your writing skills. This book is, in brief, a brilliant work of art. Buy this book today and become the writer you were meant to be! Highly, highly recommended.

All writers apart from writing their 'magnum opuses' should make their 'key to their art' available in the form of writing or recors for interested readers who wish to know what writing meant to the authrs, how they went about ideas etc.

Gail Sher has done a good job of letting us know not only the above things but also how other authors like woof,thoreau and so on interacted with writing.

While writing about the four truths for writers, she also tells us how writing a haiku has got her stated on writing, the common fallacies like getting discouraged by feedback,how to deal with the well known writers block and well sated 'writers anorexia' that writers are bound to get stuck with, how much of reading is good or bad for writing, the importance of a making a habit of writing.

Five Pillars of writing is an excellent chapter on how to start with 'flat writing' of everyday events and tring to build something out of it in phases.

Her truths all echo 'write' which is a message well sent across in the book.

Somewhat coldly cerebral in a Zen Buddhist kind of way - and also because the author used little or no personal anecdotes. She and Natalie Goldberg are both Zen Buddhists and both teachers of writing, but otherwise they couldn't be more different: the strict introvert and the effusive extrovert. This book came across as more intellectual than most writing books and more interested in the psychology of creating rather than in giving you beginner's exercises (Goldberg) or in offering you an endless pep-talk (Julia Cameron). It had some unusual insights and I like its focus on writing as a spiritual practice, as a process through which you refine yourself, rather than pushing at us all to try to get published. Recommended!

This book is a great merging of Eastern thinking and Western literature. An unusual and surprisingly cogent inspirational writing help book. Highly recommended for the open-minded thinker!

Gail Sher is a writer, a teacher, a psychotherapist and a zen buddhist. She has infused this book with her accumulated wisdom garnered from many years of experience in all of these disciplines and by doing so she has produced a book that will inspire aspiring writers to go more deeply in their writing efforts.

This is more a book of practical writing wisdom with experimental suggestions and exercises than it is one offering the "usual and expected" technique; these sometimes unusual suggestions and exercises are meant to help the writer get the core of their "writer self" and to get the most out of his or her writing session.

According to Sher there are four "Noble Truths", the most fundamental of which is that "writers write". If a writer establishes a habit of regularly showing up when he or she is supposed to then he or she is already a successful writer even if nothing of value is produced during the writing session.

The book is divided up into seven sections (parts I-VII); a single exercise heads each section and there are an average of 7 to 10 chapters inside each section. The chapters themselves are refreshingly very short (each averaging a couple of pages) but in being so short each chapter is pithy, direct to the point and without waste.

Also there are a great many quotes that are from mostly writers throughout the book that seemed very helpful and inspirational to me as I read them.

I don't think that this book is enough to make you a competent writer. (I don't think it tries to accomplish that though.) To me it is more an inspirational aid that (as you sit there in front of your typewriter) helps you become more attuned to your "writer self"; overall it helps you to recognize and identify your assets and deficits as a writer.

I enjoyed the book thoroughly and I think that anyone looking for an inspirational type book on writing (or on creativity for that matter) imbued with the spirt of "zen" will enjoy it as well.

There is a saying "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." (I paraphrase). Vast simplicity can be vastly challenging and vastly difficult. And vastly simple. So with this book. "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." Just so.