โ Scribed by Ellen Gilchrist
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Life: -- The Middle Way -- The Shakespeare Group -- How Books Still Change Our Lives -- Casting My Lot with the Gypsies -- The Consolations of Art -- The Only Constant Is Change, and Yet, I Still Won't Use a Computer -- How I Got Stronger and Smarter Instead of Stupider and Sadder -- Writing: -- How I Wrote a Book of Short Stories in Three Months -- Living in New York City -- The Sinking Ship -- Breaking the Rules -- In the Weather of the Heart -- A Writer Should Be Able to Write Anything -- Everyone Wants to Be a Writer -- "You Always Use Setbacks to Help You Play Better" -- Write What You Know -- Choosing the Books -- Learning to Teach Writing by Watching a Great Dance Teacher -- Crisis in the Creative Writing Program -- Everyone Thinks They Are a Writer -- Why Is Rewriting So Hard? -- Sunday Morning -- Eudora Welty -- Another Hard Thing for a Writer to Learn to Handle -- How I Invented Traceleen -- How to Move Characters from One Place to Another -- How to Become Inspired -- Decons -- Learning to Teach -- The War with the Squirrels -- What They Write About -- Teaching: -- Teaching, A Journal -- Teaching, A Journal (Continued) -- My Third Year -- Worrying -- Students -- The Ice Storm -- Creative Nonfiction (as Fiction) -- The Semester from Hell -- Drunks, Dope Addicts, and Losers, Characters My Students Give Me -- How Can I Help These Students Learn to Write? -- Onward -- Hitting a Snag in the Teaching Game -- Rip Van Winkle and the Unwanted Wings -- Teaching, A Journal (Continued) -- After Six Weeks of Classes -- The Geology Field Trip -- Monday at Dawn -- The Big Question -- The Tar Baby.;Fifty essays and vignettes centered on the transforming magic of literature and the teaching and writing of it come together in a collection by the critically acclaimed author of Flights of Angels and the National Book Award winning Victory over Japan. 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.
Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
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