Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Writing your way through life, 2 Aug 2006
This isn't the usual sort of writer's manual or self help book. For a start, there is very little about formal technique - that's not what it's about. It's about the process and not the result. The assertion here is that, in writing as well as in life, what you do isn't as important as how you do it. And how you do it is about change and transformation.
I hope that doesn't sound offputtingly abstract - there's plenty of practical advice here, although some of that may be a bit unexpected too. Among other things, we are shown how to lower our standards, forget about trying harder, and to borrow liberally and creatively from other writers. More challenging still, we are reminded that the less we do, the more we are likely to experience.
Many of these ideas come directly from the writer's Buddhist practice, and indeed the way the book is written feels profoundly Buddhist - in its warmth, its language, its seriousness and in its playful paradoxes. Billed as a how-to-write book, you could almost use Writing your Way as a how-to-meditate book too, or even as how-to-live-your-life. For Manjusvara there is no reason to see these as separate activities.
He is very clear that writing, meditation and life give us the opportunity and the ability to change our basic emotional patterns, as well as making it obvious why we might need to, and what we have to gain. Some very moving personal details back this up, both from Manjusvara himself and from his students. The process is made to feel exciting and liberating rather than daunting, by the kindness of the tone, the openness of the author to sharing his own experience, and the practicality of the exercises. Writing your Way starts and ends with the deceptively simple sounding task of dealing with distractions, and pads purposefully through the other big issues of life, as well as of writing, like the struggle to be authentic, the search for wholeness and the desire to find order in the apparent chaos that surrounds us.
In the tradition of Buddhist teachers, Manjusvara takes very little credit for the thoughts and ideas he presents. He quotes liberally, and acknowledges generously, and not always from the sources you'd expect. There are lines here from Tibetan monks, John Cage and from the guys at the local car repair shop. Well-chosen poems and pieces of prose illustrate his points too, not just from William Blake, Emily Dickinson or Seamus Heaney, but also from many people who have discovered their writing voices through the Wolf at the Door writing workshops.
Some of the dozens of suggestions that I found really helpful were when and why you might want to try writing with the "wrong" hand, how to hear the difference in letter sounds to improve the way your writing dances along, and how to use playing cards to break away from cautious language habits.
The more profound lesson though was to be receptive to my own creativity, and to keep on bringing the wolf to the door.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An inspiring book mentally, emotionally and spiritually. , 25 Aug 2006
I have read a plethora of books on creative writing and how to teach it. There have been good ones, weird ones and bad ones. Writing Your Way is the best book I've read on the subject. I read it over a scorching week in my garden by the sea in Galloway, did the exercises and soaked in the ethos of this book.
I say ethos because, as you will see, the author is a Buddhist. But the book is free from preaching or evangelising. Instead it takes you to the core of who you are in the process of getting you writing. This is important because getting to the core of who you are takes you to the most important point in writing. Your voice.
If you are starting to write, already writing, or a world weary professional, here is a book to energise you, to rekindle your passion for the art.
There are bonuses too. The spirituality you can take or leave. I took. The introduction to the author's work. I took. And a delight for me; the introduction to a brilliant minimalist poet, William Stafford.
So hats off to Manjusvara . An inspiring book mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Des Dillon
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5.0 out of 5 stars
An inspiring 'first book' for would-be writers, 15 April 2009
I love to tell stories and several times it has been suggested I should write some of them down. But the harder I tried to do so the more stunted and lifeless the pages became. I read Manjusvara's book, tried the exercises and took his advice to try less hard and set my sights a little lower. I was set free from my imagined restraints. Writing Your Way has opened the door to an storehouse of creative pleasure and I recommended it to anyone who would like to write but is not sure quite where to begin.
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