The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice (Compass)

This is a wonderful book. But it is a book of poetry, not a book of prose. It is not like the more typical "writing" books such as those written by Natalie Goldberg and Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. Gail Sher does an amazing job of creating short one or two page poetry based musings about writing. She provides exercises to go along with her musings and these are delivered with a healthy dollop of quite encouragement and belief. This is a complicated little book - sometimes I had to read her musings two or three times to get the most out of them. Some of them just floated clear above my head. I really did love this book, but it is poetry about writing so I can see why it might not work for everyone.

This book is a treasure. I read it once in a trance, and I am on a second reading, which I feel sure will birth a third and more readings, hopefully until I read it and wake up! under the shelter of Sher's words, my current Bodhi tree. This book is so achingly beautiful that is almost isn't there; I have to reassure myself that I own it (Does anyone ever truly own beauty?). The sharp read-aloud-able passages are anything you want them to be--- poetry, aesthetic theory, a guide to writing and life--- and everything you want them to be. This isn't a book for those who like clear guidelines, and yet the book is full of clear guidlines. It's pretty deep. I recommend it highly for serious (happy) artists and human beings.

This is one of those books that I would buy for every writer friend of mine, if I had the money. It's hard to convey the power that Gail Sher is able to impart with her very simple, straightforward style. I am a produced playwright who has been working on fiction for a number of years, and I believed myself to be "above" books that purport to tell one about writing. Gail Sher speaks (I think) to those who are past the beginner stage, who have begun the hard task of finding their voice and know a little about the painful, joyous process of translating that into a finished work of fiction. This book, like her first one, is a book you can literally open to any page and find something that will help you on your journey or answer a question you weren't even sure you were formulating in your head. Unlike "One Continuous Mistake", though, this book assumes an intelligence in the reader, a desire to delve deeper into the simple bead-to-bead-to-bead experience that the complex task of writing ultimately breaks down to. The observations and conclusions by Ms. Sher in this book are denser in nature than they were in "One Continuous Mistake". I took this to mean that, as she did with the first book, she had written this new book for me and the special place that I found myself in (in relation to my fiction). I have to believe that others have this same feeling about the wise words of Ms. Sher and that they will find their way to this new book as well.If you are serious about being a writer, and if you spend a good deal of your brain-time pondering exactly what that means, then this book is essential. If you know that you have talent as a writer but, for whatever reason, you feel you have lost touch with that spring you drew from, you need this book. It is unique. It will speak to you.