Writers and Their Notebooks

by Diana M. Raab (Editor)

Overview

Personal reflections on the vital role of the notebook in creative writing, from Dorianne Laux, Sue Grafton, John Dufresne, Kyoko Mori, and more.

This collection of essays by established professional writers explores how their notebooks serve as their studios and workshops—places to collect, to play, and to make new discoveries with language, passions, and curiosities. For these diverse writers, the journal also serves as an ideal forum to develop their writing voice, whether crafting fiction, nonfiction, or poetry.

Some include sample journal entries that have since developed into published pieces. Through their individual approaches to keeping a notebook, the contributors offer valuable advice, personal recollections, and a hearty endorsement of the value of using notebooks to document, develop, and nurture a writer’s creative spark.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611179934
Publisher:	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/13/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	493,336
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

An essayist, memoirist, and poet, Diana M. Raab is an instructor in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. She is the author of three poetry collections, Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You, The Guilt Gene, and My Muse Undresses Me, and the memoir Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal—winner of numerous awards including the 2009 Mom's Choice Award for Adult Nonfiction and the 2008 Indie Excellence Award for Memoir.

What People are Saying About This

Phillip Lopate

I salute the editor of this valuable collection, Diana Raab, who has done such a sensitive job of gathering these diverse, eloquent, and experienced voices and encouraging their thoughtful, heartbreaking, rambunctious, free flights of testimony and speculation into being. Freedom is a frequent theme in these pages. The freedom to try out things, to write clumsy sentences when no one is looking, to be unfair, immature, even to be stupid. No one can expect to write well who would not first take the risk of writing badly. The writer's notebook is a safe place for such experiments to be undertaken.

Editorial Reviews

I salute the editor of this valuable collection, Diana Raab, who has done such a sensitive job of gathering these diverse, eloquent, and experienced voices and encouraging their thoughtful, heartbreaking, rambunctious, free flights of testimony and speculation into being. Freedom is a frequent theme in these pages. The freedom to try out things, to write clumsy sentences when no one is looking, to be unfair, immature, even to be stupid. No one can expect to write well who would not first take the risk of writing badly. The writer s notebook is a safe place for such experiments to be undertaken. Phillip Lopate, from the foreword

From the Publisher