Writer's Path: A Guidebook for Your Creative Journey: Exercises, Essays, and Examples
Author: Todd Walton, Mindy Toomay
List Price: $17.95
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ISBN: 1580081606
Publisher: Ten Speed Press (May, 2000)
Sales Rank: 232,200
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
A Teaching Book
This book not only offers excellent writing exercises, it also includes the authors' examples so you can get a feel for how to make best use of the techniques described. I especially enjoyed the biography data sheets which help you to better understand your characters (or yourself!). This is a "teaching" book. Here, do this, it says, but goes on to show you how, step by step, which many books don't bother to do. The Writer's Path will keep you busy, entertained, and hopefully, writing better and better pieces.
Rating: 5 out of 5
So many reasons to use this book
The Writers Path is a not just about writing. It is also about reflections, healing and connecting to oneself and others. It serves not only the seasoned and blossoming writer, but also those looking for a sensitive structure to explore personal insight and creativity through writing.As one who teaches a college class about the creative process as well as being a creative arts therapist I have found invaluable tools in the Writers Path. The exercises, essays and examples help students and clients alike connect with their spirit, their story. We all have a story to tell. Creativity is a great healer. Having methods of tapping into it though writing has proved insightful and therapeutic for my students and clients who claim "they are not writers". They have explored some of the techniques in the Writers Path to create some profound and touching stories.
I was first attracted to the book because I wanted toexpand my writing skills. I was pleasantly surprised to find it so divers in its application. It should be on every creative writing class syllabus. Those looking for creative group process ideas will find them in this book. Walton and Toomay present a beautifully written guidebook for ones creative journey.
Rating: 5 out of 5
My Path
The majority of "The Writer's Path" consists of exercises and examples, tied together by bits of wisdom, suggestions, and experiences the authors have had. There are plenty of suggestions for using these exercises in partner, class, or group writing, which makes them much more widely applicable than most other books. Also, when I read other books I often shrug at many of the exercises, finding them a little less than inspiring. Most of this book's exercises come with variations, suggested places to start, ways to take them further, and so on, and I found them more interesting.
The exercises range from "jump starts" (quick little things) to "letter forms" (exercises you can do with postcards and letters), "style" (exercises to help you work on your voice and style), "character" (things like biography data sheets, character explorations), and more. If you only read one chapter from this book, though, read the "story" chapter. The exercises in random story structures, abstract story structures, natural story structures, poetic outlines, and so on are intriguing, fun, and inspiring.
The examples are my only quibble with the book. They take up a lot of space, and I wasn't terribly interested in them. I do think they serve one important purpose, however. The writer who is afraid to just cut loose and allow herself to write something silly or even--heaven forfend--bad can see that it's okay to not write masterpieces here, and that can be fairly liberating.This would be a particularly valuable book for writing teachers, I believe. The authors have done quite a bit of teaching, and they share many of the insights they've learned. So whether you're teaching creative writing to high schoolers or some of your adult neighbors, in a classroom setting or an informal writers' group, you could learn a lot from this book.
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