I am excited to be here to bring you a guest post from Stephanie Vanderslice. Please help me by giving her a warm welcome to the blog!
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The
first thing you need to know is that I have a thing about books about the
writing life. I can’t get enough of them. Anne Lamott’s classic Bird
by Bird is my favorite but I have a long list of other beloved “writing
life book” authors, including Heather Sellers,Julia Cameron, Robin Black,
Elizabeth Gilbert, Grant Faulkner. Seriously, when I go to the bookstore,
the reference shelves are one of the first places I check. That’s where
they keep the books on writing and I have to see if there’s anything new.
A
lot of people might wonder why I like these books so much--I mean, shouldn’t I
be, you know, writing instead of reading them? The truth is, I get
plenty of writing done--but I also get discouraged, like anyone else. I
have to keep my spirits up and I do it by reading these “pep talks” in book
form.
I’m
also someone who loves to learn from other people, and let me tell you, besides
reading literature itself and taking classes, there are few better ways to
learn about writing than reading a writing life book where someone else talks
about how they do it.
The
second thing you need to know is that while I was writing several other books,
including my first novel, The Lost Son, another memoir, and some hybrid
scholarly books about teaching creative writing, I started my own writing blog
in 2007 and eventually got a break to write for the Huffington Post in
2012. I loved talking directly to my “people”--other writing geeks, in
that venue, especially when other writers in cyberspace told me that my story
had encouraged them or set them on a new path. That experience got me thinking
I could expand those conversations into a book about developing a writing life
for “regular people” like me.
The
rest is history, as they say. I began outlining the book, drawing on my
years of writing and teaching other writers. I also re-read Bird by
Bird for the umpteenth time ( I hardly ever re-read other books, so this
alone says volumes about how I feel about it) because if I was going to model
this book after anything, it was going to be my favorite writing book.
I
wrote The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life aiming for the same easy,
conversational, memoir-like style as Bird by Bird, but there are
important differences. The main difference is that I don’t talk much
about craft in this book, the way Anne Lamott and many, many other authors do.
There are plenty of great craft books out there and I didn’t feel the
need to add to them. No, what I talk about is the how of the writing
life. How you fit it into your busy job and family schedule. How
you break into your first publication. What it’s like to seek and find an
agent, to have a book on “submission” with major publishers. These
shouldn’t be trade secrets--and yet, at the same time, the realities of the
life of the writer can be shrouded in mystery. I wanted to lift that
shroud and say, “here’s how I did this, maybe it will work for you.”
My
dream for this book is that it might be the book someone else reaches for when
they are feeling discouraged in their writing and are seeking some inspiration.
I would love to see it grow worn and dog-eared, littered with sticky
notes and underlinings, to know that it followed someone faithfully them over
the years from shelf to shelf, the way my own 1994 edition of Lamott’s book
has. That was my goal when I sat down to write The Geek’s Guide to the
Writing Life, with Bird by Bird never more than an arms-length away,
and I’ve tried to stay faithful to that vision. Now it’s time to let it
out into the world. If you want to write, I hope you’ll seek it out.
Other
Information:
Author
name: Stephanie Vanderslice
Web
site (and any other links you’d like included: Facebook, Twitter, buy pages,
etc.):
https://www.amazon.com/Geeks-Guide-Writing-Life-Instructional/dp/1350023558/ref=la_B004G0FI0M_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1515641044&sr=1-1
Bio:
Stephanie Vanderslice was born in Queens, NY in 1967 and grew
up there and in the suburbs of Albany. Her essays have appeared in Mothers
in All But Name, Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex and Work in their
40's and many others. In addition to The Geek's Guide to the Writing
Life, she has also published Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? 10th
Anniversary edition (co-edited with Rebecca Manery) with Bloomsbury. Other
books include Rethinking Creative Writing and Teaching Creative
Writing to Undergraduates (with Kelly Ritter). Professor of Creative
Writing and Director of the Arkansas Writer's MFA Workshop at the University of
Central Arkansas, she also writes novels and has published creative nonfiction,
fiction, and creative criticism in such venues as Ploughshares Online, Easy
Street and others. Her column, The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life
appears regularly in the Huffington Post.
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Thanks Stephanie for coming by the blog today!
Happy Reading!
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