The Writing Life

by Ellen Gilchrist

Overview

Celebrated author Ellen Gilchrist has played many roles-writer and speaker, wife and lover, mother and grandmother. But she never tackled the role of teacher.

Offered the opportunity to teach creative writing at the University of Arkansas, she took up the challenge and ventured into unknown territory. In the process of teaching more than two hundred students since her first class in 2000, she has found inspiration in their lives and ambitions, and in the challenge of conveying to them the lessons she has learned from living and writing.

The Writing Life brings together fifty essays and vignettes centered on the transforming magic of literature and the teaching and writing of it. A portion of the collection discusses the delicate balance between an artistic life and family commitments, especially the daily pressures and frequent compromises faced by a young mother. Gilchrist next focuses on the process of writing itself with essays ranging from "How I Wrote a Book of Short Stories in Three Months" to "Why Is Rewriting So Hard?"

Several essays discuss her appreciation of other writers, from Shakespeare to Larry McMurtry, and the lessons she learned from them. Eudora Welty made an indelible impact on Gilchrist's work. When Gilchrist takes on the task of teaching, her essays reveal an enriched understanding of the role writing plays in any life devoted to the craft. Humorous and insightful, she assesses her own abilities as an instructor and confronts the challenge of inspiring students to attain the discipline and courage to pursue the sullen art. Some of these pieces have been previously published in magazines, but most are unpublished and all appear here in book form for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604739114
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	03/05/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	226
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ellen Gilchrist, Fayetteville, Arkansas, is the author of many novels and collections of essays, short stories, and novellas, including The Cabal and Other Stories, Flights of Angels, The Age of Miracles, The Courts of Love, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, Victory Over Japan (winner of the National Book Award), Drunk with Love, Ellen Gilchrist: Collected Stories, and I, Rhoda Manning, Go Hunting with My Daddy.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xiii
Part 1	Life
	The Middle Way	3
	The Shakespeare Group	13
	How Books Still Change Our Lives	18
	Casting My Lot with the Gypsies	24
	The Consolations of Art	36
	The Only Constant Is Change, and Yet, I Still Won't Use a Computer	39
	How I Got Stronger and Smarter Instead of Stupider and Sadder	43
Part 2	Writing
	How I Wrote a Book of Short Stories in Three Months	53
	Living in New York City	58
	The Sinking Ship	65
	Breaking the Rules	69
	In the Weather of the Heart	72
	A Writer Should Be Able to Write Anything	75
	Everyone Wants to Be a Writer	78
	"You Always Use Setbacks to Help You Play Better"	80
	Write What You Know	84
	Choosing the Books	89
	Learning to Teach Writing by Watching a Great Dance Teacher	92
	Crisis in the Creative Writing Program	96
	Everyone Thinks They Are a Writer	99
	Why Is Rewriting So Hard?	102
	Sunday Morning	105
	Eudora Welty	110
	Another Hard Thing for a Writer to Learn to Handle	113
	How I Invented Traceleen	119
	How to Move Characters from One Place to Another	122
	How to Become Inspired	126
	Decons	130
	Learning to Teach	133
	The War with the Squirrels	135
	What They Write About	138
Part 3	Teaching
	Teaching, A Journal	145
	Teaching, A Journal (Continued)	147
	My Third Year	152
	Worrying	155
	Students	162
	The Ice Storm	164
	Creative Nonfiction (as Fiction)	167
	The Semester from Hell	171
	Drunks, Dope Addicts, and Losers, Characters My Students Give Me	173
	How Can I Help These Students Learn to Write?	178
	Onward	180
	Hitting a Snag in the Teaching Game	183
	Rip Van Winkle and the Unwanted Wings	186
	Teaching, A Journal (Continued)	190
	After Six Weeks of Classes	195
	The Geology Field Trip	200
	Monday at Dawn	204
	The Big Question	205
	The Tar Baby	208

Editorial Reviews

In this collection of wry and poised autobiographical essays, most previously unpublished, National Book Award winner Gilchrist (Victory over Japan, etc.) is disarmingly direct in evoking herself as a trapped young wife and mother who returned to college, studied under Eudora Welty and became involved in the New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Miss., during the civil rights era, a turning point in her eventual "escape from the bourgeoisie." She writes frankly and without self-loathing about overcoming alcoholism, and reflects on the powerful influence of her disciplined, sporty father, drawing analogies between tennis and writing, coaching and teaching. She tells of writing her first published book of stories, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, in three months and of how its publication coincided with the birth of her first grandchild. Affording insights into her writing process, including the necessary evil of letting down friends and family in order to put writing first, Gilchrist's droll, optimistic and seasoned voice is irresistible. A final series of pithy essays focuses on her adaptation to academia late in life; she enthralls with witty, tender observations of her writing students' progress. Gilchrist's love of life, her tireless work ethic and her self-assured sense of fun and folly shine in this vital and inspiring collection. Agent, Susan Ramer of Don Congdon and Assoc. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"It is, simply, a beautiful book. Beautiful in its lucid, limpid eloquence; in the remarkable wisdom about human nature it displays; and in its delicious cocktail of sarcastic humor, disarming candor, and face-slapping intelligence . . . This gathering of her thoughts speaks to anyone for whom the written word is one of life's primary joys."

—Brad Hooper, Booklist starred review

"In this collection of wry and poised autobiographical essays, most previously unpublished, National Book Award winner Gilchrist (Victory Over Japan, etc.) is disarmingly direct . . . Gilchrist's droll, optimistic and seasoned voice is irresistible. A final series of pithy essays focuses on her adaptation to academia late in life; she enthralls with witty, tender observations of her writing students' progress. Gilchrist's love of life, her tireless work ethic and her self-assured sense of fun and folly shine in this vital and inspiring collection."

—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher