The Writer's Home Companion edited by Joan Bolker, Ed. D.

By Kate Phillips   

 

            There are authors we recognize as kindred spirits. We have all their books on our shelves, piled on tables, chairs, even the floor, or on our E-Readers. We buy their latest books sight unseen, reviews unread. They just belong to us.
 

            On Charlie Rose, author Nicole Krauss described other writers as either "of or not of her tribe". In The Writer's Home Companion, Ruth Whitman describes kindred authors as "the company I want to keep". Whatever we label it, some authors just speak to us.

 

 

As a writer, there are many books I consider company I want to keep including The Writer's Home Companion edited by Joan Bolker, Ed. D. This book is a gem, a compilation of almost thirty writers sharing their thoughts and experiences about their profession which will appeal to many other writers.

 

The book has two parts:

 

Part I: The Writing Process

 

                        Preparation

                        Beginning

                        Revision

                        Poetry

 

Part II: Becoming a Writer

 

                        Voice

                        Audience

                        Practice

 

Three to eight writers address each topic. While I found something of interest in every essay, sometimes almost every word in a piece spoke to me.
 

In the Preparation section, Donald M. Murray shares, "Write what you need to write, feed the hunger for meaning in your life. Play at the serious questions of life and death. Cultivate the silence when writing speaks…If you let the writing—or the line or tune or dance—flow, you will be carried where you never expected to go…"
 

In the Beginning section, Patricia Cumming, a published poet, lists over 200 writing prompts and creative activities she invented to get any writer started. Also, B. F. Skinner shares that Stendhal once remarked, "If when I was young I had been willing to talk about wanting to be a writer, some sensible person might have said to me: 'Write for two hours every day, genius or not.' That would have saved ten years of my life, stupidly wasted in waiting to become a genius."
 

In the Poetry section, which I almost skipped as I am not a poet, Rita Dove writes: "How restless and curious the human mind is, how quick the imagination latches onto a picture, scene, something volatile and querulous and filled with living, mutable tissue!…Every discipline craves imagination, and you owe it to yourself to keep yours alive."
 

A reprint of Helen Bendict's essay "A Writer's First Readers" in the Audience section quotes other writers. Cynthia Ozick shares, "There's nobody, really, to trust outside the critic within you."…Yet making the choice to rely only on an inner critic takes tremendous faith. John Irving believes that having it is the mark of a mature writer.
 

In the Practice section, Joan Bolker writes: "But I began to see that if I was going to be a real writer than writing had to become, with very few exceptions, the most important thing in my life."
 

Writers of every genre have knowledge to share. Don't limit your horizons. Read. Learn from as many as possible—and keep writing!