13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What Does It Mean To Engage In The Act Of Writing?, May 19, 2002
This review is from: Writing and the Spiritual Life : Finding Your Voice by Looking Within (Paperback)
This is a book about the process of writing and what it means, especially as a spiritual practice.
It is best consumed in small doses as the prose is dense with meaning. It is not dense like a scientific text, it is dense like a poem, not surprising because the author is, among other things, a poet. She is a widely-read one who quotes sources which were entirely unknown to me.
Chapters such as "Doubt and the Inner Critic," "Beginning A Writing Spiritual Practice," and my favorite, "Wordlessness In Writing Practice" (which a less imaginative sort might call writer's block) act as signposts for places that the writing pilgrim might find along the way. My favorite exercise is "Building an Altar of Uncertainty."
This book both invites and rejects comparisons with Natalie Goldberg's _Writing Down the Bones_. Vecchione doesn't give a fig, in the end, what it is that you write, only that you do write.
I imagine that the intended audience for this book is writers of poetry and fiction, but there is much in here of value to those whose primary writing is keeping a diary or journal. So do write, Dear Reader, but first, ponder this book.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An inspiring ride to jumpstart your practice, December 17, 2005
This review is from: Writing and the Spiritual Life : Finding Your Voice by Looking Within (Paperback)
This is such a great book! Vecchione has a gifted way of drawing you towards your soul and the stories only you can tell. She makes it obvious that we all have an important voice to share, and she gives you really helpful tools to access this. I can't recommend this book highly enough. I'd put it up there with Goldberg's Writing down the Bones and The Artist's Way. This is a book any person interested in writing should have in their collection.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delineating the borders of your rivers and jungles, April 5, 2002
This review is from: Writing and the Spiritual Life : Finding Your Voice by Looking Within (Paperback)
As a creative writer and professor I have been looking for a good book to recommend on the self and writing for many years. This has been as we would say in Spanish a task as large as a cathedral. Why there are hundreds of books on how to write and reach within. What I find most useful about Patrice Vecchione's book, before I sit down to work on my novel is reading, perusing, rubbing a piece of the introduction on my literary wounds. Quotes from this book like these motivate me to keep peeling the onion of my deeper creativity.
Whether we need to write a letter to our long lost sister or a commentary of a children's Christmas program, this book allows us to see ourselves as the wisdom and creativity filled vessels we need to know we are in order to accomplish the writing task. I know it would have been impossible for a non-poet to write this book. It is a book able to take you into your own inner map of self, your own inner "book of every thing," and to help you delineate the borders of your rivers and jungles.
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