Writing Alone and With Others

Rating:
Summary: This book has already changed my life
Review: I bought this book last month and have been working through the exercises on my own and with my writer's circle. I try to write for a few hours every evening, and until I found Schneider's book those hours could often feel like a penance. Now, I look forward to my time alone with my computer, and I can't believe how much more limber, open and creative I feel.

Schneider's exercises for and advice about working with a group have re-inspired my friends and me. We've been writing together now for a couple of years, but with the help of Schneider's book we've already brought ourselves to new levels in our own writing and in our abilities to encourage each other. Schneider knows exactly what it's like to be a writer -- the joys and the hard parts. This is THE book.

Rating:
Summary: Very motivating book!
Review: I had already owned Pat's previous book "The Writer as Artist: A New Approach to Writing Alone and With Others" and thought this book might have been a sort of revision. Thankfully I took a closer look and found that this new book is so rich with new material including inspiring anticdotes and writing excercizes. It is one of the books I keep on the small shelf right on my writing desk. I highly recommend this book for both the instruction and the supportive attitude.

Rating:
Summary: A welcome edition from a good teacher
Review: I teach school, seventh grade, and use writing "across the curriculum" the new lingo for writing in all disciplines. I've used this author's earlier work, which is good, but this is just a great update. So much richer than almost any other writing guide, and very, well, companionable is the only way I can put it. A hearty recommendation to all teachers for this book.

Rating:
Summary: A welcome edition from a good teacher
Review: I teach school, seventh grade, and use writing "across the curriculum" the new lingo for writing in all disciplines. I've used this author's earlier work, which is good, but this is just a great update. So much richer than almost any other writing guide, and very, well, companionable is the only way I can put it. A hearty recommendation to all teachers for this book.

Rating:
Summary: Destined to Be a Writing Classic
Review: I teach several writing teleclasses and teleseminars and workshops and I am always on the look out for writing books which will both serve me as a writer and as a facilitator AND will serve my students.

"Writing Alone and With Others" by Pat Schneider does that and more.

Schneider's tone is a perfect blend of the business of writing and the sacredness of writing and the individuality of each writer.

She writes of genius within each writer - and she goes further to say "Genius needs a lifetime of dedicated practice." In this book one would certainly find a companion to nurture that dedicated practice with such a wide variety of writing exercises that anyone and everyone would find gold.

My favorite chapters include: Chapter 3: Toward a Disciplined Writing Life and Chapter 7: Growing as a Writer. I had really looked forward to hearing Schneider's take in Chapter 9: The Ethical Questions: Spirituality, Privacy and Politics. I wasn't sure why or how Spirituality fit into that equation, and I still don't after reading the chapter.

In re-reading it, I see how Schneider speaks of "ethical questions in writing will of necessity touch our most primal spiritual orientation" so seeing that, perhaps the chapter would have been better titled differently. Even so, it doesn't detract from the content of the book, it is simply a moment of saying "Hmmm. That is interesting. I wonder what is up with that?"

I can not recommend this book highly enough for all writers at all stages of creative growth. It is expansive and expanding, intriguing and evocative. It is bound to become a classic - if the writers of the future are especially blessed..



Rating:
Summary: 5 stars and I haven't even read it yet!
Review: I was fortunate enough to hear Pat speak at a seminar at my university earlier this year. She used a couple of exercises from her book in the class and I wrote my first bona-fide short story. I've always had a difficult time writing fiction, and after two semesters working on my master's degree in creative writing, I had all but given up on fiction, determined to stick with the poetry and non-fiction I knew I had a handle on. The book is full of inspirational exercises for all types of writing, and from what I understand, is very user-friendly. If you're interested in learning more about Pat Schneider, visit the Amherst Writers website. She is a fantastic woman with the drive and talent to share her gifts with others.

Rating:
Summary: 5 stars and I haven't even read it yet!
Review: I was fortunate enough to hear Pat speak at a seminar at my university earlier this year. She used a couple of exercises from her book in the class and I wrote my first bona-fide short story. I've always had a difficult time writing fiction, and after two semesters working on my master's degree in creative writing, I had all but given up on fiction, determined to stick with the poetry and non-fiction I knew I had a handle on. The book is full of inspirational exercises for all types of writing, and from what I understand, is very user-friendly. If you're interested in learning more about Pat Schneider, visit the Amherst Writers website. She is a fantastic woman with the drive and talent to share her gifts with others.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the Only Resource a Writer Needs
Review: If you are a writer on a tight budget and are considering which resource book to purchase out of the overwhelming sea of writing books, you need not looking any further. Writing Alone and With Others is an update of The Writer as an Artist by Pat Schneider, founder of the Amherst Writers and Artists Press and workshop method in Amherst, Massachusetts.

This book is chock full of advice on the craft of writing for those who are struggling with discipline and is an excellent resource for those who are in writing/critique groups or those who want to start a writing group. Some of the areas covered are fear, discipline, the development and growth of the craft, voice, and the approach and methodology of group writing. In a heading entitled Why Keep a Journal? it is stressed that one's life has significance and is part of history of the world. In Finding Your Own Voice, writers are encouraged to reclaim their "original voice", the one used as a child, in finding the writing voice. There is a brilliant piece from Pat's own life where caught up in life's woes, she allows herself a reprieve from writing, only to find that in that suspended state her creativity erupts forth naturally of its own volition. The exercises throughout the book are provocative and stimulating and work well individually or in group settings.

I had the pleasure of attending Pat's book launch and workshop for the book earlier this month in Berkeley where, at Pacific School of Religion, she holds an annual writing workshop. Upon my arrival home, I immediately began to devour this great resource and have been picking it up every day. This is the one writing book that should be purchased this year.

Dera Williams

Rating:
Summary: "Eureka!" Finally a book on what REALLY is "writing"
Review: It was only two or three pages into the introduction of this book before I realized that Pat Schneider had given me the one book on writing I had looked for my entire life.

The great barrier between each of us and our own unique genius is fear. Writing -- at least deep, personal writing -- results from a direct confrontation with that fear. Some writers abandon their genius for fear of the pain of introspection. Others develop the courage to face themselves and move forward. Genius can flourish within an incubator of safety, self-confidence, focus, and practice. A nurturing environment allows some the freedom to take greater risks and plumb greater depths of personal understanding than those trapped within the cycle of their own fears.

By perfectly articulating the unspoken dread that many writers face when they seat themselves before the empty page, Schneider puts a face on the unseen enemy -- the writer him- or herself -- and allows one to move forward and deal with issues that otherwise may remain unidentified. Schneider demonstrates how to confront these scenarios not only to the solitary writer, but within the group workshop experience as well. As someone who has participated in workshops AND faced the terror of "alone," I can attest that her book can touch in a single sitting what sometimes years of therapy fails to unmask.

As theraputic as the book may be for one's writing, it may or may not be a therapy for the writer. As Schneider says in her book, "Whether or not writing heals the writer is irrelevant. What matters is the power of the work itself." This book is about writing and resolution, not about self-healing, though often the two go hand-in-hand.

This book should become a staple for all high school or university creative writing classes or for any writing class -- fiction or no -- that aims to put the writer in touch with his inner voice. In the beginning each of us brings so much unnecessary baggage to the pen or to the keyboard. And there is so much to regret for the needless time we lose in learning to know ourselves. Let's get on with it.

Rating:
Summary: From a carpenter
Review: Most of my writing is done with a thick and stubby pencil on a piece of 2 x4 lumber -- I'm a carpenter and for years, once or twice a day, when I measured or cut a piece of wood that was about to disappear into the framing of a house, I'd write a little something on it. Sometimes just words that I like: "crystal," "ampitheater," "roar." Other times a line or two about the day, or the place. My wife bought this book in Middlebury three weeks ago, I've read it every night (I'm a slow reader) and I'm grateful to the woman who wrote it. She understands and loves words. I think she wrote this book for people who want to write and publish on paper, but, take it from me, her ideas work just as well on lumber.