Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

by Dani Shapiro

"Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers and everyone in between."--Jennifer Egan

From Dani Shapiro, bestselling author of Devotion and Slow Motion, comes a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling. At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Still Writing is an intimate companion to living a creative life. Writers--and anyone with an artistic temperament--will find inspiration and comfort in these pages. Offering lessons learned over twenty years of teaching and writing, Shapiro shares her own revealing insights to weave an indispensable almanac for modern writers.

• ISBN10: 0802121411
• ISBN13: 9780802121417
• Publish Date: 12 August 2014 (first published 1 October 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[celinenyx]

There is a lot of good in here, and Shapiro's personal style is admiring. Still Writing is not so much a book on how to write, but what it's like to write for a living. Writing is not easy and often requires courage and stamina, yet is also beautiful and fragile and joyful.

The downside to this book is that is was repetitive in its imagery. I got rather tired of the mention of Shapiro's chaise longe and her namedropping. I felt like deep down, there is a bit of classism running through this book, like how she often refers to "selling fish" as a non-creative, stable career. (Fisheries are struggling, dedicated fish shops are having a hard time competing with chain supermarkets)

For Shapiro writing is suffering, a ripping open of the soul - and here we just fundamentally differ. I write for the hopeful, joyous parts of myself. I write from a place of pleasure, not one of pain.

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Trigger warnings: death of parents, severe illness, ill newborn.