The writing life

Most tasks — whether one is baking a cake, building a birdhouse or taking out the garbage — have beginnings, middles and endings. Each stage of the process is a little different from the others. This is true of any writing project as well, and Dani Shapiro approaches her advice to writers in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life (2013) in this way.

Whether one is writing a book, an article, a term paper or a blog post, the problems, doubts and pressures are a bit different at each stage. How do I get started? How do I stay focused with so many distractions? How do I wrap this up when there are still so many obvious imperfections? Shapiro deals with such questions in a logical, if meandering, manner.

Like most of her books, including her novels, Still Writing is part memoir. Having grown up in a home with troubled, secretive parents, Shapiro remains haunted by her experiences, and those memories pop up frequently in illustration of her points. So this is not your typical self-help book.

The wisdom of an experienced writer blends in seamlessly with that writer's life story. Any aspiring writer who reads this will not only learn helpful hints but also be forced to shed illusions about what a writer's life is like.