Customer Reviews

Writing and Publishing Personal Essays

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I'll confess right up front that Sheila Bender's latest book, "Writing and Publishing Personal Essays," contains my essay "Dreams of Going." But even if that hadn't been the case, I would still highly recommend it. In addition to being an excellent poet and essay writer, Sheila is also a wonderful teacher - I know because I've attended a number of her classes. Written in her kind yet informative style, this book is a printed version of what you would learn in one of her workshops.

Did you ever have a writing or English teacher who demolished your writing, leading you to give up any dreams you had of becoming a published writer or of ever writing creatively at all? Sheila is the antithesis of that teacher. She doesn't believe in criticism, even the "constructive" kind. Instead, she offers a three-step method of review (Velcro words, feelings, and curiosity) that gently leads the writer to new discoveries.

In "Writing and Publishing Personal Essays," Sheila devotes a chapter apiece to eight different kinds of personal essays, provides examples from a number of writers, and then comments about what makes each essay good and perhaps how it could be made better, using her three steps. She also explains how to find material from your own life to write about, how to most effectively shape it into an essay, and even how to look for someone to publish it, if that's your aim.

If you've ever yearned to shape your life experiences for the page and to find the deeper meaning in them, get this book. Follow its suggestions, and you'll learn the craft of writing personal essays. You won't find a better teacher than Sheila.

Sheila Bender's updated and extended edition of Writing and Publishing Personal Essays includes solid instructional information and writing exercises for the beginning writer and the published writer. Chapters start with a "write question." For example, The Description Essay chapter begins with "Write Question #1: For what, person, place, event, or object do I have strong feelings of love or of hate?" She explains the elements of good description essays, provides examples, notes why an essay works well, and guides the reader through effective exercises to discover material for their essays. Her positive tone and nurturing approach helped me develop drafts and then polish them into publishable essays by following her three-step response and revision method. Work your way through this book and you'll be ready for Chapters XI and XII, Prepare the Fruit for Market, and Trucking the Fruit to Market.

Sheila Bender's wise and patient voice inspires and educates the new essayist but also jumpstarts those who've been writing essays for a while (and might feel stalled). Bender's real affection for the essay saturates every page of this helpful book. She clearly respects the genre and has made significant contributions to it. As a memoir and personal essay workshop instructor, I am pleased to add this book to my list of recommended titles.

I used Sheila's first edition of this book to help me write and publish five personal essays. This edition is even better. Her "write questions" help me match my content with a well-established thinking/writing structure i.e. form of rhetoric, and I'm on my way. Then her three-step response technique (which I offer to trusted readers as a guide for what I need from them)gives me the information my writing brain needs to make content-enriching revisions. Her methods work, and her teaching style is full of warmth and real-life examples. I recommend this book highly, especially this new edition, to anyone who wants to write personal essays and needs help structuring their material.

Reviewer: Sam Turner, Pima Community College Instructor:"THIS, I REMEMBER..." "But I don't really have anything to write about." So often, that is what my senior citizens say when they first participate in my class. Sheila Bender's book, Writing and Publishg Personal Essays, helps the students find a reason for writing. This book is a welcome addition to her previous books and is used extensively for assignments. Proof of the success, is the number of repeat membes. Some of the members have taken the class eight or ten times! Bender's suggestions never get old!

The essay and the memoir are forms of self-expression and often intended as a kind of literary legacy by their authors. Occasionally an obscure essayist will become widely known and find their writings among the ranks of recognized literature for subsequent generations of readers. Or to put it another way, the personal essay is a serious form of literature, collections of which achieve a lasting presence, and even influence, from one generation of readers to another. In Writing And Publishing Personal Essays, by poet, essayist, author, teacher, and publisher Sheila Bender shares a practical wealth of "tips and techniques" that she has used to help provide her students with the skills and confidence to become published writers. Among the benefits provided aspiring writers is a powerfully encouraging inducement to begin writing down their thoughts and observations using the essay as their vehicle; specifically useful, step-by-step instructions for writing eight different categories of personal essays; workable techniques for receiving and utilizing critical feedback; proven tips for getting essays published; as well as an extensive listing of additional resources for the dedicated essayist. There is even a roster of contributors that have helped Sheila Bender to make Writing And Publishing Personal Essays an invaluable and instructive resource for novice essayists, and offer even more experienced writers an extensive refresher along with a few ideas that might be new to them. Highly recommended reading for all aspiring authors regardless of their chosen formats for literary expression.

Perhaps the fact that I ordered a copy of the Second Edition of Sheila Bender's WRITING AND PUBLISHING PERSONAL ESSAYS after reading a library copy of the first edition conveys the extent of my high regard for the contents. Not only did I look forward to seeing how the book had evolved, but it's one of the few references I want to have on hand for easy access all the time.

On the first page Bender writes, "(Students writing essays) used sound and rhythm, cadence, repetition, images, and pattern to retrieve experience and make discoveries. When they succeeded, these essays picked the reader up, took the reader on a journey, and placed the reader back on the ground again, stunned but clear-headed, as poems do." Reading these words, I was hooked, certain she would take me beyond the prosaic pieces of sophomore lit.

As I continued to read, I discovered that writing essays is both more and less complex than I'd imagined. I was a bit daunted to find eight different essay forms listed in the table of contents. I was relieved to read her explanation that these chapters cover each of the eight styles of rhetoric, each tailored to a specific purpose. She walks us through each style in the friendliest possible way, opening each chapter with a core question to illustrate the type of material it addresses. Each chapter offers "gathering exercises" to help us focus on our material in depth, and amplifies the instruction with sample essays of each type, written by a variety of people. The emphasis throughout is on the dual value of the personal essay as both a tool of exploration and a means of expressing and communicating our concepts and discoveries in an intimate, personal and compelling way.

After my initial sense that the topic was far more complex than I imagined, I discovered that it boils down to systematically and deeply exploring and organizing thoughts to make sense of them. If that's complicated, it's because the concepts are complicated, not the process. At bottom, personal essays are stories, and the tenets Bender expounds apply to writing any sort of story, especially lifestory and memoir. She provides blueprints and assembly instructions for story structure. It's up to each writer to follow her lyrical example and embellish that structure with words that sing and delight.

The final section of the book is comprised of three meaty appendices. The one I'm most fond of provides a three-step method for providing feedback to other writers. This method provides a structure for identifying what you appreciate ("Velcro words"), how you felt as you read, and what things piqued your curiosity and made you want to know more about them. This process respects writers by empowering them to understand readers' perspectives and make the necessary changes while leaving them free to decide how best to do it. I have used this method several times with students and fellow writers with highly satisfying results highly for all concerned.

As both a teacher and writer of lifestory and memoir, I heartily recommend this book as a basic reference for anyone writing any form of creative nonfiction. It's a classic.

This book is like having the master teacher, Sheila Bender, in your own living room (or whatever places you write). In her smart and kind way, she guides as she does in her workshops.

If you want to write better, regardless of how you write now, this book is bound to unbind your next layer of talent.

I am the publisher at Silvercat and Silver Threads, the publisher of this book.

A new edition was published in October 2010. If you cannot order it here or in bookstores, email info@silvercat.com. We will ensure that you can obtain a copy.

This would be a great book for a freshman composition class, or for someone with zero experience writing. It's not a bad book, I was just looking for something more advanced. I've since learned of the existance of Phillip Lopate.