Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

by Maggie Smith

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

With personal anecdotes, writing exercises and a deep-dive into the pillars of creativity, this is a one-stop shop for budding authors from a bestselling voice in literature.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith distills creativity and the craft of writing with a practical guide perfect for fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982170844
Publisher:	Washington Square Press
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Maggie Smith is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of nine books of poetry and prose, including A Suit or a Suitcase, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can find her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.

Editorial Reviews

"In her winsome, practical Dear Writer, poet and memoirist Maggie Smith shares reflections on the elements of creativity, plus useful tools and prompts for artistic practice. Smith's approach is both playful and serious: she is committed to writing with clarity, honesty, and grace. But she's also a student of delight, of 'artistic mischief' and experimentation. Dear Writer urges readers to take the creative process seriously but treat their own work lightly—and to relish wordplay and shenanigans, pause when a fleeting 'beauty emergency' arises, and notice moments of humor and joy. The creative life, Smith says, is full of gifts to acknowledge and celebrate, and Dear Writer is a joyous, wise companion for the journey."
—Shelf Awareness

“Like some seminal texts for writers by writers (Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings, Virginia Woolf's A Letter to a Young Poet), this is at once pure craftmanship and a glimpse of the gut-wrenching, visceral ways great writers feel the world around them. A lovely invitation into Smith's processes that is luminous and shimmering, designed to make writing feel accessible yet magical!”
—Library Journal (starred review)

"Oh, how I wish I'd had access to this book thirty-five years ago, when I was just starting out as a writer! Maggie Smith has created an offering here of great substance and generosity—walking writers of all ages (and of all levels) through the sometimes wild and terrifying landscape of literary endeavor. With encouraging words, stories from her own life, and—best of all—exercises that are actually helpful, she lends a hand to all. I admire this book, and its author, with all my heart."
—Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic

From the Publisher

★ 04/01/2025

Like some seminal texts for writers by writers (Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings, Virginia Woolf's A Letter to a Young Poet), this is at once pure craftsmanship and a glimpse of the gut-wrenching, visceral ways great writers feel the world around them. In 20 essays, poet Smith (You Could Make This Place Beautiful) shares how endlessly expandable the world is for—and to—the writer, and she encourages her readers to trust themselves as they explore this expansiveness with creativity and connection. Each section (attention, wonder, vision, surprise, play, vulnerability, restlessness, connection, tenacity, and hope) begins with a letter or invocation to the reader-as-writer and unfolds with Smith's signature honesty, showing her struggles and the moments of beauty she finds. She shares handwritten pages and the poems they become throughout, and despite her stature as a poet, it never feels patronizing or exclusionary. VERDICT A lovely invitation into Smith's processes that is luminous and shimmering, designed to make writing feel accessible yet magical. It is a study less of what writing should look like than it is of how it emerges in moments of conscious attention, unexpected playfulness, and everyday restlessness.—Emily Bowles

Library Journal

Poet Maggie Smith's newest audiobook expands her purview to offer all kinds of artists helpful advice about what she sees as the 10 essential elements of creativity: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Her light, sweet-sounding voice often assumes a poet's studied rhythmic cadence as she narrates with beautifully clear enunciation. The result is a listenable experience that, perhaps inadvertently, highlights her professional background. Yet the pace feels right for a book chock full of ideas. As befits the author of the poem "Good Bones," which went viral in 2016, her advice is both kind and tough-minded. What's most important, she emphasizes, is that "we have to love making things more than we love having made them." A.C.S. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2025 - AudioFile