Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life
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New York: HarperCollins
Writing Past Dark is a best-selling, widely anthologized book that charts the emotional side of the writer’s life.
It is a writing companion to reach for when you feel lost, and want to regain access to the memories, images, and ideas inside you that are the fuel of strong writing. Friedman looks at the dilemmas a writer faces and shares the clues that can set you free. She explores envy, the ubiquitous writer's disease that turns you against your own work and your own self, and she offers advice on how to overcome it. She questions why we fall silent when we do, what persuades us to quit on a certain story or chapter, and how to regain faith in our work.
Writing Past Dark illuminates other secret, difficult, and very common emotions. Probing our fascination with the taboo, she looks at the urge to write about family and friends — the desire to discover on paper the very things we have never been able to say out loud — even while we are reluctant to hurt loved ones. She describes how our need to be perfect can make us mute. And, looking at writing school, she discusses the search for a mentor, the cult of technique, the realization of how we learn to become artists, and how we learn to become ourselves on the page. Personal, intimate, and thoughtful, Bonnie Friedman is a wise companion, also traveling through the night, sharing insights that can free you to keep writing, take risks, and experience the value of your own work.
Writing Past Dark is a best-selling, widely anthologized book that charts the emotional side of the writer’s life.
It is a writing companion to reach for when you feel lost, and want to regain access to the memories, images, and ideas inside you that are the fuel of strong writing. Friedman looks at the dilemmas a writer faces and shares the clues that can set you free. She explores envy, the ubiquitous writer's disease that turns you against your own work and your own self, and she offers advice on how to overcome it. She questions why we fall silent when we do, what persuades us to quit on a certain story or chapter, and how to regain faith in our work.
Writing Past Dark illuminates other secret, difficult, and very common emotions. Probing our fascination with the taboo, she looks at the urge to write about family and friends — the desire to discover on paper the very things we have never been able to say out loud — even while we are reluctant to hurt loved ones. She describes how our need to be perfect can make us mute. And, looking at writing school, she discusses the search for a mentor, the cult of technique, the realization of how we learn to become artists, and how we learn to become ourselves on the page. Personal, intimate, and thoughtful, Bonnie Friedman is a wise companion, also traveling through the night, sharing insights that can free you to keep writing, take risks, and experience the value of your own work.
If you think writing is a lonely task and you can afford one book, buy this one.
--Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (Addison Wesley), edited by Janet Burroway
[A] slim, excellent book on the emotional aspects of the writer's vocation . . . intimate, honest, liberating.
--The Forward
Friedman's elegant prose style makes Writing Past Dark a delicious experience for lovers of language.
--Copley News Service
The caliber of Friedman's craft itself is instructive and invigorating - better than even Annie Dillard's in The Writing Life.
--The Columbus Dispatch
Bonnie Friedman's Writing Past Dark is wise, heartfelt, beautifully written. For anyone who has ever sat down to write a piece of imaginative prose, it will radiate.
—David Leavitt, author of Family Dancing and The Indian Clerk
Wise, practical, nurturing, and confident, Bonnie Friedman will be a funny, hard-nosed friend for those fretting with the difficulties of trying to be healthy writers. Writing Past Dark is an excellent, necessary, wonderful book.
—Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy
This is a wonderfully wise book . . . It is, by example, a guide to integrating the terrors of the creative process with the work and art of living a life . . . Ms. Friedman brilliantly articulates so much that I have long since despaired of explaining.
-- Robb Forman Dew, author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death and The Truth of the Matter
--Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (Addison Wesley), edited by Janet Burroway
[A] slim, excellent book on the emotional aspects of the writer's vocation . . . intimate, honest, liberating.
--The Forward
Friedman's elegant prose style makes Writing Past Dark a delicious experience for lovers of language.
--Copley News Service
The caliber of Friedman's craft itself is instructive and invigorating - better than even Annie Dillard's in The Writing Life.
--The Columbus Dispatch
Bonnie Friedman's Writing Past Dark is wise, heartfelt, beautifully written. For anyone who has ever sat down to write a piece of imaginative prose, it will radiate.
—David Leavitt, author of Family Dancing and The Indian Clerk
Wise, practical, nurturing, and confident, Bonnie Friedman will be a funny, hard-nosed friend for those fretting with the difficulties of trying to be healthy writers. Writing Past Dark is an excellent, necessary, wonderful book.
—Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy
This is a wonderfully wise book . . . It is, by example, a guide to integrating the terrors of the creative process with the work and art of living a life . . . Ms. Friedman brilliantly articulates so much that I have long since despaired of explaining.
-- Robb Forman Dew, author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death and The Truth of the Matter