A daily motivator for people who write--and for all those who long to write--providing an insistent wake-up call for the creative urge, with insights on how to work against resistance, live with the loneliness, develop discipline, and dare to take deeper risks in their work.
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For Walking on Alligators Susan Shaughnessy culled quotations from nearly 200 writers and other creative people--Ethan Canin, Art Spiegelman, Robin Williams, and Camille Paglia among them--that can help jumpstart the creative process. Each quotation leads to a short meditation on its subject, which in turn leads to a kind of vow the reader can internalize and act upon: "Today, I'll look over the key setbacks of my life. Are some ready to contribute comic color to my writing?"; "Today, I'll take a look at the high road. I will write a little better and a little differently. I will stretch." These tender morsels are best taken like vitamins: one a day. They will encourage, inspire, amuse, and provoke, but mostly they will make you start writing. After all, warns Shaughnessy in the introduction, "The writing you don't do today is lost forever."
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
It's been awhile since I read excerpts from this book, but the general message of the book remains with me...one sign of an effective book. It's the kind of book you keep on your desk and pick up when you need that kick in the pants to get back to writing. The author understands and says just the 'write' thing! Buy one for yourself, and for a friend who keeps wistfully saying, "I really want to get serious about writing someday...."
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For any writer, they will be faced some time in their writing life where they will be stumped. I believe this book is a book to help writers of today. If you are going to sit down and write for today, and need some inspiration pick up this book. Opening this book, you come to a page where there are two critiques. One that stuck out the most to me was one that summarized this book in just a paragraph. "Many writers thirst to know what other writers have to say about what they do, and how they do it...I find that suggestions and ideas from this book float back to me at odd times, like when I'm picking off the anchovies at the pizza restaurant, and I think, yes, I could try that," Adair Lara said. Susan has said that writers in this book are here to make a path for you. Agreeing with her, I feel that this book is to kick some rocks out of the way. Each page gives a message from a writer, a little story and a mediation to follow. Every mediation is appropriate in getting the point across to today's writers. This book is filled with many extrodianary writers helping you pave the path to your life as a writer. Ending, I leave you with, "You are ready to begin your life as a writer, write today, the curtain is up."
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Susan Shaughnessy's "Walking On Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers" (HarperCollins; paperback; 203 pp.), is a hard-edged gem of a book that cuts to the often-irritated quick of the writing life.
Via her dually-delivered doses of other people's observations -- mots both juste and justified, whether from familiar figures or unexpected sources -- and her own pithy commentary, the willy and witty Shaughnessy again and again lays a prickly grid of reality over the nebulous field of endeavor in which I toil, rendering it in clearer focus.
I've been working at the word trade for nearly 30 years as reporter, feature writer, and documentary filmmaker. I punched through the first 20 of those years without benefit of access to "Alligators." If I'd been able to avail myself earlier of the insights codified by Shaughnessy in her 1993 volume, I'd have been a wiser and perhaps better writer at a younger age. I'd certainly have avoided or at least short-circuited many of the soul-grinding, spirit-stifling, energy-draining habits of mind and contractual entanglements that dot the terrain of freelance writing like so many plastic anti-personnel mines.
Last fall, while teaching a Smithsonian Associates course on feature writing, I held up my copy of "Walking On Alligators" and told my students, "Get a copy of this book and read it. Even if you don't go on to become a writer, you'll be a better person for having read it." I say the same thing now to you.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I own two -- one copy for home -- and one for the office. Shaughnessy's book inspires me when I catch myself doing something other than the writing I'm supposed to be doing. And it does so with succinct, motivational, and sometimes philosophical paragraphs. Walking on Alligators is one of my top books for gift-giving, ever since I bought my first copies a few years go.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I bought this book two years ago and I read it daily as a meditation. Whether or not I write every day, it always keeps me focused on what I need to do, which is to write. I find it inspirational and encouraging no matter where you are with writing. It covers all the fears and phobias any writer or creator might have. A great resource!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In Walking on Alligators, Susan Shaughnessy addresses writer's daily struggles. Her advice and truths provide help to move past the dilemmas, and offers confidence and courage to continue down the path of writing. The book is composed of 200 daily writer's meditations, beginning with a quote from a famous person such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Shaughnessy includes a short story about the conflict or struggle. The meditation is ended with a promise to improve the quality of writing today, by moving past the difficulties.
The conflicts addressed range from getting started with the piece and continuing to focus on the end result. The advice comes from Susan's own struggles during her writing career along with many other well-known authors. The most important piece of advice Susan shares is to start writing, "The only way to write it to write today. The writing you don't do today is lost forever. Tomorrow's may be better but it may depend on the less exciting groundwork you can lay today."
Susan addresses believing in your work, in your hunches and using creativity in your work. She enables writers to understand the importance of setting goals, creating better working conditions and "accepting there is no easy way to buckle down, so write anyways."
Although, the book doesn't offer a step by step detailed explanation on how to achieve the advice, the encouragement and support makes you feel as if you have a thousand writers helping you improve you success one day at a time.
The conflicts addressed range from getting started with the piece and continuing to focus on the end result. The advice comes from Susan's own struggles during her writing career along with many other well-known authors. The most important piece of advice Susan shares is to start writing, "The only way to write it to write today. The writing you don't do today is lost forever. Tomorrow's may be better but it may depend on the less exciting groundwork you can lay today."
Susan addresses believing in your work, in your hunches and using creativity in your work. She enables writers to understand the importance of setting goals, creating better working conditions and "accepting there is no easy way to buckle down, so write anyways."
Although, the book doesn't offer a step by step detailed explanation on how to achieve the advice, the encouragement and support makes you feel as if you have a thousand writers helping you improve you success one day at a time.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gives the one-page motivational thought plus quote that gets you...
As a patent attorney--and wannabe published novelist-- I write all day every day.
Walking on Alligators gives me the one-page motivational thought plus quote that gets... Read more
Walking on Alligators gives me the one-page motivational thought plus quote that gets... Read more
Published 5 months ago by TerrenceBrownDC
5.0 out of 5 stars
My gift of choice to high school Seniors
I have given this wonderful little book to more than a dozen high school seniors facing their first forays into college essay writing, and working on essays required by AP and... Read more
Published on March 6, 2011 by Caroline G. Hemenway
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Whole Croc of Inspiration
What a Musesend! I bought this book when it first came out and still use it every day as part of my morning journaling process. Read more
Published on June 21, 2008 by Joyce Wagner
5.0 out of 5 stars
Writing Is Every Single Day
Susan Shaughnessy began her writing career as a copywriter and editor. She has written two novels, magazine and newsletter articles, speeches, songs, and advertising copy. Read more
Published on March 17, 2008 by Story Circle Book Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
I was also somewhat disappointed
It is certainly an attractive little volume, though I don't care much for the font (a serif font that looks as if there was too little ink to fully print each segment of each... Read more
Published on January 5, 2008 by P. Flora
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must for every writer
This book stays on my bed side table. It provides inspiration, thoughtful exercises, and motivation to write when you have convinced yourself that you would rather be sleeping,... Read more
Published on July 26, 2007 by Ieasha M. Taitano
3.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat disappointing
This book of affirmations, while attractively put together, is best for someone who wants a boost in the motivational aspect of writing, rather than practical advice. Read more
Published on June 14, 2000
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