• Complain
LitArk » Books » Art

Judy Reeves - A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life

Here you can read online Judy Reeves - A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1999, publisher: New World Library, genre: Art. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    New World Library
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    1999
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Playwright and editor Judy Reeves has taught writing, led creative writing workshops, and participated in writing groups for years. A Writers Book of Days is a compilation of all that shes learned from getting together to write with other people. She says, the book came about because I saw the difference ongoing, regular practice could make in a writers life. Practice makes perfect, and this book makes practice easy by providing writers and would-be writers with stimulating topics, helpful instruction, monthly guidelines, dozens of inspiring quotes, writerly lore, and tips for special writing sessions such as marathons, cafe writing, and other ways to make the work of writing more creative and fun.

Judy Reeves: author's other books


Who wrote A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.


Judy Reeves - Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups
Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups
Judy Reeves
Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups
Judy Reeves - Wild Women, Wild Voices: Writing from Your Authentic Wildness
Wild Women, Wild Voices: Writing from Your Authentic Wildness
Judy Reeves
Wild Women, Wild Voices: Writing from Your Authentic Wildness
No cover
No cover
Judy Reeves
A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life

A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓
↑
Reset

Interval:

↓
↑

Bookmark:

Make
1234567...65
page_1
Page 1
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
"To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write."
Gertrude Stein
page_1
page_10
Page 10
Guideline 1
Keep Writing
The most important part of writing practice is writing. Getting the words down on the page. Don't stop to edit, to think, to rephrase, or rewrite. If you keep your writing hand moving, you'll bypass the censor, the editor, the critic, and if you're lucky, maybe even the ego.
This isn't to say writing practice is "stream-of-consciousness" writing where you attempt to get down every thought that passes through your mind and the writing that emerges is a jumble of disconnected thoughts and images. During practice sessions, stay focused on the topic and the image that arises, and keep the pen moving as it explores that image and then moves on to the next. Sometimes you'll rocket through the topic on a surge of power that started at liftoff and keeps you at 4Gs the whole ride; other times your writing will be more like a lazy river on a Sunday afternoon, peaceful and easy and sundappled. The trick is to, at any speed, just keep writing till the end.
Don't stop to reread what you've written until you've completed the practice session. Each time you stop, you move out of the place of intuitive trusting to a cerebral place of judging, evaluating, comparing. There is a time for that, but not during practice sessions. Writing practice is for writing.
Just keep the pen moving until the time is up, or until you feel complete.
page_10
page_100
Page 100
"No, no, Grandpa Leydon stopped speaking long before that. He didn't speak to Grandma Leydon for the entire last year she was alive."
"No, that's not how it was. Grandpa Leydon got cancer and had his larynx removed years after Grandma died. He was fine until then. Talked a blue streak."
There's no harm in lying a bit.
Henry Miller
So the truth of facts may not be the truth of the story. And the facts may have to be changed in order to be truthful. Remember, your only obligation as a writer is to tell the truth. "A writer's problem does not change," Ernest Hemingway told us. "He himself changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly, and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it."
See Transferring Real Life to Fiction, Truth Is in the Details
page_100
page_101
Page 101
Writing Cycles To Every Thing There Is a Season
Every writer experiences cycles a productive time, a fallow time. Just like the Bible says, a time to reap and a time to sow. You will be capable of tremendous output and you will be exhausted. Your cycles may run with the course of the moon or be in rhythm with some internal, cellular clock that keeps its own time.
Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterwards summer may not come.
Rainer Maria Rilke
You may notice that sometimes, no matter what, the writing is difficult. Even though you're not stressed, you're present with your writing, you've set aside the time and are looking forward to the session, when you put pen to page nothing happens. Or that which happens is boring. Or junk. The words are clumsy and get in each other's way like the sneakered feet of a thirteen-year-old. You experience a dozen false starts and generally just can't get the thing going. Before you scream "writer's block" and phone your therapist for an appointment, consider that this may just be the fallow side of your cycle.
Other times, your day is short by three hours, you've got umpteen dozen things going on, when you do sit down at the page, you're jittery and not really present. Yet this time, when you begin writing, it flows. Words light upon each other in graceful abandon, your imagery is as rich as crme brle with that same crusty, crispy edge. You hardly notice the passage of time; you write nonstop for two hours.
Through writing practice, you'll learn your cycles when to take advantage of the productive time and when to refill your stores. If you want to actually track your cycles, go back through several months of notebooks and chart the ebb and flow of your writing.
June 22
Write about a letter.
June 23
Write about an hour of the day.
June 24
This is what you can see by starlight.
June 25
It was Sunday, the time it happened.
June 26
Write about the making of beds.

page_101
page_102
Page 102
There are a handful of markings that leave an easy trail: Generous, loose handwriting that spreads across the page and large, open lettering, maybe even writing outside the lines vs. small, cramped lettering with many cross-outs, abandoned words, and deserted sentences. Fresh language and vivid images vs. trite words and weary clichs. Page after page of writing in a session vs. a paltry few in the same amount of writing time. As you reread the pieces, you'll see right away when you were on and when you were off.
Of course, no chart will give you complete information about your writing history. There's more to writing cycles than the pull of the moon or the beat of an internal rhythm; even the ocean is influenced by storms. However, if you are unable to write, consider that this may be a time of dormancy, like an orchard in winter: somewhere, underground in the roots and deep within the heartwood of every apple tree, the idea of apples rests, awaiting the time to begin once again the cycle of fruition. Do not judge yourself during this fallow time; accept that it is a time of rest and infuse yourself. Take in, fill up, rejuvenate.
And when you are producing, give all, every time.
See Writer's Block, What Stuck Looks Like, How to Get Unstuck
page_102
Next page
1234567...65
Light

Font size:

↓
↑
Reset

Interval:

↓
↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life»

Look at similar books to A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Judy Reeves - Wild Women, Wild Voices: Writing from Your Authentic Wildness
Wild Women, Wild Voices: Writing from Your Authentic Wildness
Judy Reeves
Wild Women, Wild Voices: Writing from Your Authentic Wildness
Barbara Dynes - Masterclasses in Creative Writing: Inspirational instruction and exercises for writers of fiction
Masterclasses in Creative Writing: Inspirational instruction and exercises for writers of fiction
Barbara Dynes
Masterclasses in Creative Writing: Inspirational instruction and exercises for writers of fiction
Judy Reeves - Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups
Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups
Judy Reeves
Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups
No cover
No cover
Kate Krake
The Write Ideas Creative Writers Toolkit: A Genre Spanning Box Set of Writing Prompts and Creative Exercises
Harriet Griffey - Write Every Day: Daily Practice to Kickstart Your Creative Writing
Write Every Day: Daily Practice to Kickstart Your Creative Writing
Harriet Griffey
Write Every Day: Daily Practice to Kickstart Your Creative Writing
No cover
No cover
Rishma Dunlop (editor)
Writing Creative Writing: Essays from the Field
No cover
No cover
Mur Lafferty
I Should Be Writing: A Writers Workshop
Debra Adelaide - Creative Writing Practice: Reflections on Form and Process
Creative Writing Practice: Reflections on Form and Process
Debra Adelaide
Creative Writing Practice: Reflections on Form and Process
Perhach - Welcome to the writers life: how to design your writing practice, reading practice, writers craft, and writing business
Welcome to the writers life: how to design your writing practice, reading practice, writers craft, and writing business
Perhach
Welcome to the writers life: how to design your writing practice, reading practice, writers craft, and writing business
No cover
No cover
Corey Latta
C. S. Lewis and the Art of Writing: What the Essayist, Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic, Apologist, Memoirist, Theologian Teaches Us about the Life and Craft of Writing.
Jennifer Blanchard - Butt-In-Chair: A No-Excuses Guide For Writers Who Struggle To Get Started
Butt-In-Chair: A No-Excuses Guide For Writers Who Struggle To Get Started
Jennifer Blanchard
Butt-In-Chair: A No-Excuses Guide For Writers Who Struggle To Get Started
Dani Shapiro - Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
Dani Shapiro
Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
Reviews about «A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life»

Discussion, reviews of the book A Writers Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.