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Overview
Digging deeply into his own writing habits, failures, and successes, Robert Benson helps you choose the ideal audience for your work, commit to it, and overcome the hurdles that inevitably confront both aspiring artists and accomplished professionals. Extending beyond the craft of writing, this gentle book moves into a rich discussion on the relationship between spirituality and art. Including wisdom from revered writers past and present, Dancing on the Head of a Pen is a beautiful mosaic of inspiration, practical help, and a glimpse into the disciplines that shape one writer’s life.
“Dancing on the Head of a Pen is a pure delight to read. Encouraging, honest, practical, and important. I needed this book.”
—Melody Carlson, author of more 200 books including Finding Alice
“With deceptive simplicity and an almost seductive easiness in his voice, Benson lays open before us the filigreed mystique of the writing life in all its beauty, its unmitigated angst, and its inescapable vocation.”
—Phyllis Tickle, author of numerous books including The Divine Hours
“Robert Benson’s Dancing on the Head of a Pen is a gem. It is wise, witty, and inspiring—a trifecta seldom achieved by a book on the writing life.”
—James Scott Bell, bestselling author of Plot & Structure
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307458148 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 07/15/2014 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 745,016 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
“I think I have a story to tell. I just do not know how to begin. Can you tell me how to write a book?”
Most often I hear such a comment during the question-and-
answer session after I have given a reading or a talk. The
question also appears in some of the letters from people who
are kind enough to read my books and kind enough to write
me after they have read them.
The question comes up more and more these days. The
digital age has changed so many things about the way writers
and publishers find each other and ferret out access to
sales and media outlets. And more and more the writer must
not only make the art but deliver the audience as well. The
whole process can seem a little daunting.
I always take the question seriously. I was once in the
same spot and grateful for any help that might move me
along toward learning to get a story down on paper.
Henri Nouwen was right when he said, “As long as we
have stories to tell to each other there is hope.”
Sharing the things I know about how a person goes
about telling his story seems only right. Perhaps it is even, as
the old prayer book says, a good and joyful thing.
—
My father came into my office one day at the publishing
business the family owned and handed me a stack of cassette
tapes and a stack of manuscript pages, and then he gave me
an assignment. “I met this young woman in Canada,” he said.
“I liked the things she was saying when she was speaking
onstage, and I told her we would help her make a book out
of it. I have been working on it some, but I cannot seem to
capture it somehow. Why don’t you give it a shot?”
The book I helped the young woman make in those
early days of my wordsmithing career is considerably different
from the books now published under my own name. But
it was the first chance given to me to learn how to make the
only art I ever wanted to make—a book.
It was my first ghostwriting assignment. I was nineteen
years old.
Many years and many books later, I found myself leaning
on my best friend’s doorjamb on a warm afternoon. I
was half conversing about writing a book and half watching
the roses blooming in our back garden. Out of one eye I was
also watching the fountain beside the path that leads to the
studio where I write.
I always enjoy conversations about writing and writers.
To be sure, the first joy of keeping such a conversation going
is rooted in the fact that any conversation that keeps a particular
writer from the burden of trudging back to the studio
and back to writing sentences is a welcome conversation.
The subject hardly matters. What counts is the ability to put
enough words into the air to delay the inevitable.
My friend told me about her recent conversation with a
sweet woman we both know. Our mutual friend had been
thinking she might try to write a book. The two of them
thought a book might be down in there somewhere, hidden
in one of the stories of her life, but the one who aspired to be
the teller of the tale did not know how to begin.
“What should I tell her?” my friend asked. “What does
she do to begin? How does one go about writing a book?”
—
The summer sun dropped down another little bit, and to get
it out of my eyes, I shifted from the left doorjamb to the
right and went into my best artist-as-teacher pose.
“This is the first thing I would tell someone who wants
to make a book.”
And then I began to expound, and the first thing and
the other nine or so went on for a bit. I am a writer. Embellishing
is one of my gifts. I also know how to stall when my
own writing is not going well.
I described the steps I take when I begin to make a book.
Some of them are habits stolen from other writers, writers far
better than I am. Some of them are practices discovered on
my own after years of dancing on the head of a pen. Some
are disciplines I stumbled upon to feed both the caliber of
the writing and the work of being a writer.
After some forty years and nearly twenty books, I have
learned I do not know a lot about a lot of things, but I do
know how to write a book.
Table of Contents
1 Dark Marks on a Page: On a Book About Making a Book 1
2 Follow Your Nose: On Deciding What to Write 15
3 Go to Your Room: On the Discipline of Being a Writer 27
4 Six Hundred Words: On Writing Every Day 41
5 The Jury Box: On Choosing an Audience 55
6 Speed Kills: On Place, Time, and Tools 67
7 Hat Tricks: On Recognizing the Task at Hand 85
8 Under the Influence: On Reading to Write 97
9 Working in the Cages: On Habits to Keep a Writer Sharp 115
10 A Step in Time: On the Value of the Literary Stroll 131
11 To Air Is Human: On Sharing a Work in Progress 145
12 The Finished Line: On Knowing When a Work Is Done 157
On Gratitude 165
A Last Note 173