It isn't very often that one gets to have a conversation very famous author. Of course, I didn't actually have that conversation with Anna Quindlen, but I feel like that I did as I read her latest book Write for Your Life.
The book is out of the ordinary because it is Anna Quindlen
way of motivating people to write about things that we don't usually think is
so important. She is very convincing in making the case that those very things
that we don’t feel are important may end up being very important. The very
first example she uses is Anne Frank. A
young girl who’s diaries documents her life, and trivialities of living, but
also describes to us her life as lived in hiding from the Nazis. Anna Quindlen
made sure we understood the importance of us, the future, having the documentation
of life as it existed for the Jews who were in hiding from the Germans through the
eyes of a young girl. That explanation packed a particularly powerful punch for
me.
We don't take our writing very seriously. We think that what we have to
say is not important enough to be scribbled down., that our scribblings would
not be interesting enough to be passed on. Her entire book is trying to
convince us that what we do, how we do it, the result of what we did, and the
importance of what we say is not up to us judge. Indeed, it is up to posterity
to judge the writing. Of course, what we write has to be honest and we have to
dig deep into our hearts and minds in order to be genuine and detailed.
She gives some very strong argument and uses real life
examples to make us think about writing. In addition, she writes about what our
writing should mean to us. How our writing would help us in our daily lives.
She writes about journaling; she talks about letter writing — a lost art in
this day and age.
She tells us about the medical training process and how they
have made doctors writing down their daily experiences a regular part of the
training. This practice helps the doctors to process the experiences that they are
facing. She emphasizes that this writing is not frivolous, this writing is not
just done for the sake of writing, this writing helps these doctors as they process
life and death situations and maintain their mental health.
She also delves into the technical parts of writing, the
structures and rules that scares the living daylights out of your average
writer, i.e., someone like me. She delved a bit into poetry — something that
most people are definitely afraid of attempting — mainly because there are so many structures and constraints to deal
with. It is rare for an average person who think they can writes to feel completely
comfortable unless they felt capable at dealing with the technical issues.
The beauty of the short book is that she discusses all of this
not as a naggy English teacher, she writes about it as a practitioner who is revealing
our misconceptions about writing and defanging our fears slowly but comfortingly.
The fact that we were having a conversation with her, the very accomplished and
credentialed writer made me feel comforted about my own writing.
The book is a short one, but it is one that I will revisit repeatedly.
This little book has and will inspire me. We shall see how my own writing experiment
progresses, but as of right now she's convinced
me to do that write.
One deliberate but interesting feature of the book is that
she added lined pages at the end of the book so that the readers could
scribbled down notes at the end. It is a sneaky way of encouraging the reader
to do that very thing that the title suggests: Write for Your Life.
I found this book interesting, entertaining, and inspirational.
I hope I live up to Anna Quindlen expectations.
