“Beyond the Writers’ Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction”, by Carol Bly

Pg. xxii

Writers must do the hard psychological work of recognizing that some things are not “just the way life is, I guess” but actually evil — whereas other things are neither “just the way life is, I guess” nor evil, but remarkably beautiful or remarkably just — worth praising… A writer has to do the hard psychological work of living with terrific mood swings… That’s logical enough, since the people who don’t experience terrific mood swings are people who figure everything’s more or less just the way it is… Writers do the hard psychological work of forming their opinions as resolutely as they can, while knowing at the same time that they may be totally mistaken.

Thoughts:

The first 3 chapters and chapter 6 of this book were wonderful. The rest seemed superfluous and a solid 5 chapters out of 12 focus on how to teach creative writing, which didn’t seem at all useful for people who are writers and not teachers.