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Writers And Their Notebooks
This collection of essays by well-established professional writers explores how their notebooks serve as their studios and workshopsA[a�aplaces 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, o...more
Paperback, 203 pages
Published
January 1st 2010
by University of South Carolina Press
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No matter what you choose to call it — journal, notebook, holdall, shoebox, commonplace book — there is no one true way, no formula for filling the writer’s sketchbook. In this age of published journals and blogs it is sometimes easy to loose sight of the free-form and become concerned about adhering to a proper format. Raab’s collected essays reassured me and reconnected me to the page and its potential. I hope I have rediscovered the carefree journal writing I once possessed.
In Raab’s collecti...more
In Raab’s collecti...more
As an intermittent keeper of a journal, I was intrigued to read this collection of essays by writers who share the ways they use journaling to confer with their deepest selves, grow awareness, seed their creativity, experiment, mess up, and serve as a "hold-all" (Virginia Woolf's term) for everything under the sun (quotes, photos, theatre tickets, scribbled notes on a paper napkin, and so on). One or two curmudgeonly articles lent variety to an otherwise sanguine set of reports on journaling and...more
A mixed bag of essay and wandering commentary and journal bricolage. Some of this was interesting, some tedious, some self-indulgent. It is a good idea and I like some chapters immensely and the charge they gave to writing things down as you go, but this could have used a stronger editorial hand.
Essays on the value--therapeutic, artistic, aid to memory--of writing in a journal (along with a couple dissenting views).
I loved how some contributors to this book kept notebooks with ideas for future projects; others kept them as diaries of their daily lives; and still others didn't keep them at all and explained why. I've always been attracted to the idea of keeping a journal but could never quite stick to the regularity of it. One of the last essays talked about how the author didn't keep a journal because putting too much on paper too soon flattened the spark of her ideas and causing her to lose interest in th...more
Sep 25, 2012
Rachael
marked it as abandoned
Don't want to read it all at once, but good for dipping into for inspiration!
A few of the essays were remarkably good; a few others were tedious. Overall, I enjoyed the opportunity to see how this handful of writers use writers' notebooks/journals to rehearse their writing.
I'll read just about anything with the word "notebook" in the title.
Very enjoyable! Some of the essays didn't really grab me, so I skimmed over them, but most of them were great. I love reading about how other people use their notebooks, and I got some interesting ideas.
Very enjoyable! Some of the essays didn't really grab me, so I skimmed over them, but most of them were great. I love reading about how other people use their notebooks, and I got some interesting ideas.
Great essays on how some of the greatest utilize journals. I wish it had scanned copies from their real journals. That would've been like having and eating that writing cake :)
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Diana M. Raab, M.F.A., essayist, memoirist and poet who teaches at UCLA Writers' Program and frequently lectures on journaling and memoir around the country.
More about Diana M. Raab...
Her memoir, REGINA'S CLOSET: FINDING MY GRANDMOTHER'S SECRET JOURNAL won the 2008 National Indie Excellence Award for Memoir and the 2009 Mom's Choice Award for Adult Nonfiction, as well as other high honors.
She has two poetry collections, MY
...more
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Nov 23, 2012 08:50am