Soul Between the Lines: Freeing Your Creative Spirit Through Writing [Paperback]

Dorothy Randall Gray (Author), Luisah Teish (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1998

In the tradition of Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way", Gray presents an empowering, creative technique which shows how to use the spirit as a source of creativity, transformation, and empowerment--and have fun in the process .

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gray has incorporated her very successful workshop into a self-help book about the magic of writing. She challenges the reader to develop not only the ability to create but also the spirituality that prompts one to create. Even if one has never picked up a pen to write down one's feelings, reading about how to achieve this level of relaxation is empowering. Gray's background as a writer, spiritual consultant, teacher, and performance artist provides the proper credentials for teaching writing skills through the techniques of meditation, mythology, and spirituality. Bravo to all those who succeed at putting her energy into practice, but also to Gray for the courage and dedication to finish the book. Lillian Lewis

Product Details

• Paperback: 309 pages
• Publisher: Avon Books (P) (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380791420
• ISBN-13: 978-0380791422
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,876,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enough Ideas to Keep You Going into Your Wild Old Age, July 13, 2000

By 

Allie Kat "sarahphin" (Nunavut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soul Between the Lines: Freeing Your Creative Spirit Through Writing (Paperback)

Creativity defines our individuality, it's not an unnecessary decoration, like too many bows on a dress. Of course it's in writing, painting, music; it's also in baking a cake, building a distribution system for auto parts, or talking to your cat, and it's in the choices we make in books or music or bed sheets. You're already creative, whether you admit it or not, or even if your grade school grammar teacher wanted you dead. Writing doesn't have to be the goal here, the idea is to use writing to brain-storm your mind and get it to open, and then turn it to any creative endeavor. Ms. Gray's book has enough muscle and exercises to drag something out of you. Even mundane results can provide joy, and you might just create something extraordinary that may, just for a moment, let someone transcend the ordinary world.

One note of caution, some of the exercises tended to get me reminiscing about every dreary thing that ever happened to me. Writing for therapy leads inward and can mire me in self-pity. It may be healing, but creativity expects you to move beyond the pathos and into a larger world where it is the therapy itself.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Think carefully about what you want from this book, May 3, 2004

By 

H. Grove "Errant Dreams Reviews" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul Between the Lines: Freeing Your Creative Spirit Through Writing (Hardcover)

Dorothy Randall Gray, author of "Soul Between the Lines," has for many years taught a workshop called "Writing From Your Heartland." This book, which draws heavily on that workshop, has a very informal style that's rather endearing, and keeps a couple of things from becoming annoying. For example, all her tales of benefits people have gained from her workshop would sound self-congratulatory if the tone were more formal. "Soul" is about figuring out your life, trying things until you find out what works for you, and heading off in a better direction than the one you rode in on.

Ms. Gray has a wonderful sense of poetry. Her prose is a little rougher, with some interesting typos and mistakes here and there, but I've seen far worse and did enjoy her style quite a bit. Each chapter (or section of chapter) ends up with several specific sections. One is called "journeys," and suggests topics for freewrites that involve the concepts just discussed. "Food for thought" is a sort of free-association list. Finally, each section ends with "seasonal surrenders." These are little rituals you can use to remind yourself of the divinity and specialness of life.

There are definitely some things about this book I didn't like. It's a bit new-agey for me. In particular, the section on angels annoyed me. The tone of the section left me with the impression that angels were supposed to be silly, cherubic beings playing pranks on people for fun. Ms. Gray sometimes refers to things as being "medical fact," or having been shown through research, as though research automatically confers validity--there's plenty of flawed research out there.

Ultimately, there are several considerations to keep in mind when deciding whether you want to read this book:
1. If you want a serious book on writing, you probably want a different book.
2. If you want a book on exploring spirituality through writing, this is probably a great book for you.
3. If you want a book with some neat new stuff that might inspire your creativity in unusual directions, and you don't mind reading through the spirituality, then this book has some inspiring and unusual writing prompts that you won't find elsewhere.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enough Ideas to Keep You Going into Your Wild Old Age, July 13, 2000

By 

Allie Kat "sarahphin" (Nunavut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soul Between the Lines: Freeing Your Creative Spirit Through Writing (Paperback)

Creativity defines our individuality, it's not an unnecessary decoration, like too many bows on a dress. Of course it's in writing, painting, music; it's also in baking a cake, building a distribution system for auto parts, or talking to your cat, and it's in the choices we make in books or music or bed sheets. You're already creative, whether you admit it or not, or even if your grade school grammar teacher wanted you dead. Writing doesn't have to be the goal here, the idea is to use writing to brain-storm your mind and get it to open, and then turn it to any creative endeavor. Ms. Gray's book has enough muscle and exercises to drag something out of you. Even mundane results can provide joy, and you might just create something extraordinary that may, just for a moment, let someone transcend the ordinary world.

One note of caution, some of the exercises tended to get me reminiscing about every dreary thing that ever happened to me. Writing for therapy leads inward and can mire me in self-pity. It may be healing, but creativity expects you to move beyond the pathos and into a larger world where it is the therapy itself.