Staying with writing : practices for sustaining the writer's work and life / Cindy Shearer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shearer, Cindy, author.

Contributor:

Bloomsbury (Firm), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authorship--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Authorship.

Creative writing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (176 pages)

Edition:

1st edition.

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2026.

Summary:

With rejection and intense commitment such integral parts of the writing life, many struggle to stay with the creative process. Combining explorations of perseverance, intention, riding through failure, and meaning-making with bringing oneself fully into one's art, Stay With It offers writers practices to sustain their writing and their creative life. Through a hybrid of craft, pedagogy, memoir and personal essay that call upon reflective exercises and prompts, Cindy Shearer helps writers understand themselves as artists as well as the nature of writing as an artistic process and practice. Drawing on knowledge from art forms beyond writing, from dancing to visual art, this book shows writers how to: - Develop their own tools for sustaining their practice that are adaptable and unique to them - See rules as opportunities and that there is no right or required process - Recognize failure as a way to probe what they really want as writers - Ask questions to understand their markets and create sustainable processes based on external drivers - Discern their true goals focused around what they truly want to create. Moving, illuminating and inspiring, Stay With It will help writers discover and claim a process they can rely on for support again and again.

Contents:

Introduction: How to Read this Book and Why

Part One: Works in Progress, Writing Lessons

Chapter One

Stay With It: The Art of Being (Revisited) or Learning to Write by Dance

Reflection

Prompt

Chapter Two

Elliot: Found and Loss: An Essay on Seeing, Failure, Imagining, Death, and Mentorship

Chapter Three

It is Okay to Quit or How to Stop Writing and Become a Writer, An Essay in Four Parts

Chapter Four

What is Creative Writing? A Personal Essay in Two Parts: Writing as Visual Art and My Life in Baseball: An Aesthetic of Creative Writing

Chapter Five

Memory Boxes: A Collage Essay on The Writing Process

Part 2: Tools and Choices

Chapter One: Work in Progress, Choices, and Decisions

Sections:

In process: What am I doing? How am I relating?

What are you ready to create? Writing is Developmental

Section Three: Writing or Bookmaking? When am I in process, when am I constructing work?

Chapter Two: Sustainable Practices

Writing is Real and That Makes it Hard (Maybe): Reflecting on what you have to say

in a work? In your body of work?

Inquiry + Meaning Making = You Decide

A Writer's Work, A Writer's Life: An Interrelationship

Listening (or Not) To What Others Say: Coaching Yourself and Being Coached

Chapter Three: Tools You Can Rely on: An Introduction

Six Unexpected Tools: Relationship, Play, Translation, Being at Home, Mending, Seeing

Failure is a Tool. Please use it.

Part 3: Saying Yes to A Sustainable Process

Looking for Lessons: A Path to Your Process

Making a Toolbox

Writing is an Ally

Defining Your Work. Who and What Informs Your Writing?

Your Sustainable Practices: Adding to Your Resources

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-350-45548-2

OCLC:

1520505672