Jay's Reviews > Writing Life Stories

This is a great classic book for anyone who wants to improve their creative writing, memoirs, and essays. The book is organized around a series of exercises designed to make readers more aware of drama, action, word choice, voice, big ideas, audience, metaphor, and meaning, etc. Each chapter is illustrated with examples from the author's personal writing, reading, and teaching. Topics such as exaggeration, summary, quotations and dialogue are included. One of the author's early articles is reproduced at the end. The book concludes with a bibliography of recommended readings to illustrate concepts presented in the book. This is definitely a book to read and review.

As I read the first 1998 edition of this book, I found it a little dated and choppy in places. I am curious about how the book has been edited in later editions. Although I found many ideas for new work, the author made me wonder how some of my previous writings could be improved.