Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Journey
Writing for Your Lifeis an inspiring companion for any writer, professional or personal, who sees writing as a spiritual act. Early chapters on creativity and story would appeal to anyone interested in breaking through self-imposed boundaries, by encouraging the writer to "set yourself the task to write not only what you know but more especially what you don't know." We've all heard this before, but Deena Metzger (A Sabbath Among the Ruins) provides such resonant anecdotes and enticing exercises that it begins to seem not only doable but fun. "Even when writing about ourselves or an event that we know well," she says, "we sometimes find that the story ... is taking a direction we never expected. As it is always possible to come back to the known, it is politic, under these circumstances, to see where the story wants to go." Later chapters help writers access their inner worlds through meditation, spirit guides, mythology, tarot cards, the muse, visions, nature, and dreams. To follow Metzger's book closely requires a great deal of hard but rewarding, work. "Maintaining a spiritual practice is an ordeal like climbing a mountain," Metzger warns, "and it demands the same of us: commitment, discipline, endurance, focus, and awareness. There at the top is the sky and, perhaps, the large vision, but ultimately the meaning is in the climbing."--Jane Steinberg