Writing Alone and with Others [Paperback]

Pat Schneider (Author), Peter Elbow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2003 | ISBN-10: 019516573X | ISBN-13: 978-0195165739 | Edition: 1ST

For more than a quarter of a century, Pat Schneider has helped writers find and liberate their true voices. She has taught all kinds--the award winning, the struggling, and those who have been silenced by poverty and hardship. Her innovative methods have worked in classrooms from elementary to graduate level, in jail cells and public housing projects, in convents and seminaries, in youth at-risk programs, and with groups of the terminally ill.
Now, in Writing Alone and with Others, Schneider's acclaimed methods are available in a single, well-organized, and highly readable volume. The first part of the book guides the reader through the perils of the solitary writing life: fear, writer's block, and the bad habits of the internal critic. In the second section, Schneider describes the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method, widely used across the U.S. and abroad. Chapters on fiction and poetry address matters of technique and point to further resources, while more than a hundred writing exercises offer specific ways to jumpstart the blocked and stretch the rut-stuck. Schneider's innovative teaching method will refresh the experienced writer and encourage the beginner. Her book is the essential owner's manual for the writer's voice.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Schneider's book is inspiring, full of common sense about fears every writer will recognize and exercises for jump-starting a manuscript. She is well acquainted with naysayers, external and internal. A storyteller, poet, librettist who once struggled to believe in herself, she sees teaching as a mission, writing as empowerment. She's led four workshops a week (one in a low-income project) for 12 years; she explains here how to lead your own. Writing Alone is as much an antidote to writer's block as you're likely to find between two covers: Writing teachers will use it as their bible."--C. Carr, O: The Oprah Magazine

"I am grateful to Pat Schneider for recognizing that our species is a writing species. If we don't write, it means something in the culture has blocked our natural instinct. Pat Schneider's helpful, totally personable book shows us how to undo that cultural abuse."--Carol Bly, author of Beyond the Writer's Workshop and My Lord Bag of Rice: New and Selected Stories

"More than movitivational or purely experiential, this very sensible yet practical text provides scores of proven exercises to help encourage the writer in all of us."--Library Journal

"Honesty is creative oxygen. Generosity is creative fire. Pat Schneider is a fuse lighter. Her work is gentle, playful, brilliant, and revolutionary. She is the real animal."--Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write and The Artist's Way

"For anyone who wants to write, Writing Alone and with Others is heartening and practical. It unfolds as the story of one writer's journey, and invites the aspiring writer along with a rich variety of anecdote, exercise and advice, celebrating both difference and difficulty as the gifts they are."--Janet Burroway, author of Raw Silk and Writing Fiction

"Schneider can help you find your genius. She encourages without ever condescending. She is guide, cheerleader, and advocate. 'What you see, write it,' she counsels. 'Surprise yourself.' You'll find exercises here that will help you do it. The second part of the book, focusing on 'writing with others,' can help the workshop leader or teacher create the kind of atmosphere in which 'images pass in silence from mind to mind,' as writers are affirmed and energized by experiencing creativity, their own and others'."--Marshall J. Cook, author and editor of Creativity Connection

"An entertaining and enlightening book...should prove invaluable to poets, writers, teachers, and workshop devotees of all backgrounds and creative denominations."-- Mindy Kronenberg, poet and teacher, author of Dismantling the Playground and editor of Book/Mark Small Press Quarterly Review

About the Author

Pat Schneider is Founder and Director of Amherst Writers & Artists and Editor at Amherst Writers & Artists Press. An adjunct professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, she has taught independent writing workshops nationally and internationally. Her pioneering work using creative writing as a means of empowering low-income populations is the subject of an award-winning documentary, Tell Me Something I Can't Forget, by Florentine Films. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Peter Elbow is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and author of Writing with Power and Everyone Can Write.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1ST edition (August 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019516573X
• ISBN-13: 978-0195165739
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 118 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars From a carpenter March 4, 2004

By Jay Chambers

Format:Paperback

Most of my writing is done with a thick and stubby pencil on a piece of 2 x4 lumber -- I'm a carpenter and for years, once or twice a day, when I measured or cut a piece of wood that was about to disappear into the framing of a house, I'd write a little something on it. Sometimes just words that I like: "crystal," "ampitheater," "roar." Other times a line or two about the day, or the place. My wife bought this book in Middlebury three weeks ago, I've read it every night (I'm a slow reader) and I'm grateful to the woman who wrote it. She understands and loves words. I think she wrote this book for people who want to write and publish on paper, but, take it from me, her ideas work just as well on lumber.

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps the Only Resource a Writer Needs August 14, 2003

By Dera R Williams VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

If you are a writer on a tight budget and are considering which resource book to purchase out of the overwhelming sea of writing books, you need not looking any further. Writing Alone and With Others is an update of The Writer as an Artist by Pat Schneider, founder of the Amherst Writers and Artists Press and workshop method in Amherst, Massachusetts.

This book is chock full of advice on the craft of writing for those who are struggling with discipline and is an excellent resource for those who are in writing/critique groups or those who want to start a writing group. Some of the areas covered are fear, discipline, the development and growth of the craft, voice, and the approach and methodology of group writing. In a heading entitled Why Keep a Journal? it is stressed that one's life has significance and is part of history of the world. In Finding Your Own Voice, writers are encouraged to reclaim their "original voice", the one used as a child, in finding the writing voice. There is a brilliant piece from Pat's own life where caught up in life's woes, she allows herself a reprieve from writing, only to find that in that suspended state her creativity erupts forth naturally of its own volition. The exercises throughout the book are provocative and stimulating and work well individually or in group settings.

I had the pleasure of attending Pat's book launch and workshop for the book earlier this month in Berkeley where, at Pacific School of Religion, she holds an annual writing workshop. Upon my arrival home, I immediately began to devour this great resource and have been picking it up every day. This is the one writing book that should be purchased this year.

Dera Williams

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally: An Intelligent Writing Book for All Writers December 5, 2003

By H. L Six

Format:Paperback

So many writing books are "dumbed down," so that an experienced writer winds up feeling they cannot get much from them. This book is the opposite. It is smart, sometimes funny, well illustrated with excerpts from well-known writers as well as from participants in Schneiders workshops.

Writing Alone and With Others is filled with wise advice from a writer who has literally "been there." Schneider is honest with her readers, describing her childhood and early beginnings, using them to illustrate how writing can transform a life.

Her techniques are gentle, yet incredibly inspiring, leaving the reader longing to write, but almost unwilling to put her book down in order to pick up a pen and paper!

There is also a chapter about writing workshops for underserved populations that details the amazing impact this technique can have on those who are often "voiceless" in our society.

The book is organized so that writers working alone and those writing as part of a group can find exactly what they are looking for. It also offers sage advice for those who want to start writing workshops based on Schneider's Amherst Writers and Artists method. And, in the back, are a variety of exercises to help jump start individuals and groups in the writing process.

This is not a simple book, nor is it easy in the sense that you can read through it in an evening. It is full of information that takes some time to process--that is a welcome change for writers who have been "at it" awhile, and are tired of entry-level how-to books.

Writing Alone and With Others is a must for those who are serious about their craft and about sharing their passion for writing with those around them.... I would--and often do--recommend it to absolutely anyone I know with an interest in the written word. It is a beautiful, charismatic, and emotionally magnetic work. Read more ›

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Writing Buddy You've Always Wanted December 2, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Ever read an interview with a famous author where the author says something to the effect of, "I couldn't have made it without my friend/my reader/my significant other," and wondered how you could get yourself one of those? Well now you can.

Pat Schneider is the writing buddy to beat all writing buddies. She's warm, funny and incredibly helpful. With years of experience both as a writer and mentor for other writers, she knows exactly how to help you untie the knots of doubt and fear and take your writing to the next level.

In addition, this book provides loads of writing exercises and wise encouragment for helping you to start your own writing group. And if you do follow her advice for starting your own writers' support group, you may just find yourself that special writing buddy(s) in the flesh, I did, though you still won't ever want to turn loose of this book.

Highly recommended.