One Year to a Writing Life: Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's Art and Craft

by Susan M. Tiberghien

Book Overview

Whether you are a writer of fiction or essays, or want to explore poetry or memoir, Tiberghien's twelve fundamental lessons will help you discover and develop your own distinct voice. Tiberghien's inventive exercises focus on the processes unique to each genre, while also offering skills applicable to any kind of writing, from authentic dialogue to masterful short-shorts. With vivid examples from literary masters such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Eduardo...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1600940587
• ISBN13: 9781600940583
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

It Got My Essay Accepted

I had been working on a personal essay for a couple of weeks. As I rewrote it, I used the chapter on personal essays in One Year to a Writing Life as a check list, and saw my essay becoming richer as a result. I submitted the essay to a publication whose submission information said they would take 4 - 6 weeks to get back to me. They accepted it within 12 minutes of receiving it! I will be recommending this to my writers' group members.

The Writing Life of a Writers' Group

For the last seven months, since I suggested our writers' group work, learn & write our way through Susan Tiberghien's One Year To A Writing Life, our group's commitment has solidified with each chapter of her book. Each bi-weekly meeting finds the six of us (writers, poets, academics)gathered to read & review our exercises from each chapter, copies for all and with reference to Tiberghien's "text". Recently, as a response to the growth in our writing and our awareness of that growth, we have re-committed to returning to particular chapters so that we may explore them once more in even greater depth, based on both the pleasure of the process and our personal learnings as writers. As the convener of our group, I would suggest a group approach to One Year To A Writing Life is an ideal process to apply to Susan Tiberghien's wise & illuminating guidance.

A great book

This is a wonderful book. I have been using One Year to a Writing Life as a textbook this semester in my Creative Writing course. The book is very well conceived so my syllabus follows the twelve lessons, week by week, with extra weeks for longer in-class writing. The book provides clear guidance, great examples and it inspires! It inspires me to both teach and write and it inspires my students. Before I chose One Year to a Writing Life as a textbook for my class, I surveyed many texts that are on the market and not a single one comes close to this great book. Thank you, Ms. Tiberghien, for helping all of us who write and who teach writing. Jelena S. Bankovic, Ph.D. Professor of English, Oakton College, Illinois

As informed and informative, as it is inspired and inspiring

Susan M. Tiberghien draws upon her years of experience and expertise as a veteran writing instructor, writers' conference speaker, and graduate school lecturer in "One Year To A Writing Life: Twelve Lessons To Deepen Every Writer's Art And Craft". A gifted writer in her own right, Susan Tiberghien covers journal writing, personal essays; opinion and travel essays; short stories (included the 'Short-Short'); dreams and writing; dialogue; folklore, fairy tales, and contemporary tales; poetic prose and the 'Prose Poem'; memoirs and biography; rewriting; and more. Of special note are her chapters on 'The alchemy of Imagination' and 'Writing the Way Home'. Enhanced with a specialized bibliographies and a comprehensive index, " One Year To A Writing Life" is as informed and informative, as it is inspired and inspiring -- making it strongly recommended reading for all novice writers and aspiring authors.

An enticing and grounding companion for the journey

If you're mindful of how today's extreme pull on your time leaves little room for nurturing a creative life, this book offers a very grounded and realistic way in which to cultivate one. And it shows you how to do it in a way that's methodical, possible, and simple. As you reflect on the author's suggestions, you'll find yourself observing inwardly and outwardly and asking yourself more centered, elegant questions about your life's images and symbols. Susan Tiberghien's book allows those of us with only slivers, not swathes, of time to become full travelers on the inner safari. This is a book that offers a writing process of effective 10-minute sound bytes rather than a list of commands requiring an afternoon. What's more, it's just plain FUN without the feel of heavy lifting. I found myself wanting to go deeper and find the center when I tried focusing on only one image in the journal entry exercises. This is a book about mindfulness as much as it is about writing. Much praise and thanks for this book that makes writing so doable!