This is a book about encouragement and inspiration from Heather Sellers.  It’s not a lesson on the , but more about how to craft a life that supports your writing.  Heather’s light and casual tone makes the book a fun read.  The chapters are short and easy to consume in brief sittings. 

How It’s Put Together:  Thirty chapters divided into three sections:

Blank Pages:  Creating a New Writing Self

  1. The First Day – overcoming your resistance to writing and change
  2. Writing You Don’t Do Alone – writing is both secret and a community activity
  3. Lover on the Side, Lover in the Center – is your writing in the center of your heart or do you keep it fondly off to one side?  Both are okay, just understand the choice you are making.
  4. Tools 101 -a discussion of the tools a writer really needs (and they’re either cheap or free)
  5. Journals – most writers have one or think they should have one.  Heather advises journaling with no rules.  Write daily or don’t.  Write in one or many different journals.  Just write.
  6. Sleeping With Books – reading is an essential part of being a writer.  Keep books close at hand and immerse yourself in them.
  7. Butt in Chair – learning to sit alone in a room to get the writing done
  8. The Russian Lady – do you want to write or do you feel you should write? You can write or not write.  Only you know what is right for you.
  9. The Rents – how your parents help define your writing life
  10. Anxiety – managing the anxiety inherent in writing
  11. Being Away From the Work – how time off from writing can cost you days to get back in groove
  12. Reversing the Message – being open to learning and overcoming resistance (fear) that changes good messages to their opposite, such as “You can write” to “You can’t write”

Turning Pages:  How to Maintain Your Commitment to Writing 

  1. Blank and Cranky – when your mood is ugly, take time off and wallow.  It will get you through it and back to writing faster.
  2. Dare to Suck – don’t let your bad writing scare you away.  Keep writing and get better.
  3. Compost – use the material of your life, your history, that has matured and ripened into something rich
  4. Dreaming Deep – getting into the Zone, focusing like a child to get at your best material
  5. How to Be Unpopular and Why – writing requires a lot of stamina and energy.  To make room in your life to support your writing, you need to say No to activities that take up your time or energy.
  6. Passionate Irritation – talk about life less and write more.  Keep the drama on the page.
  7. Bad Childhoods – suffering doesn’t matter.  Awareness and insight about people matter.
  8. Three Years – give yourself time to develop your writing.  You’re going to doing this for your whole life.  You have time.
  9. Little Loops – learning to identify the self-defeating tracks that play in our head and stop us from achieving our writing potential
  10. Blocked – a block is a snarl of complex fears and anxieties, but you can learn to manage it
  11. When Do You Say It? – finding the courage to say “I am a writer.”

New Pages:  Finding Your Place in the World of Writing

  1. Fame and Fortune – they rarely come to a writer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a success doing what you love
  2. Mentors – finding a mentor by becoming ready or “mentor-able”
  3. Rejection, Bliss, Speeding Tickets – learning to accept rejection as part of the writing life
  4. False Modesty – knowing what you do well and acknowledging it is not a bad thing
  5. Workshops – they can help you learn to deal with criticism and make better mistakes in your writing
  6. Ambition – understanding what kind of writing life you want to have
  7. A Wave Suspended – maintaining a state of passion and power just waiting to be unleashed and taking the next steps in your writing life

In each chapter she shares examples from her own life and follows it up with exercises that the reader can follow to try out her advice. 

Each chapter has from 1-5 exercises and they are unique.  Everything from writing a short love letter to your novel (treating it like a treasured lover you can’t wait to spend time with) to writing down a To-Do list of everything in your life that you need to do (all those errands and chores that collectively keep you from writing) and then burning it (so you can learn to say no to things that eat up your time and then use that time for writing instead).

How It Helped Me:  I read writing books for mostly one reason – I’m looking for the perfect “system”.  The process or way of writing that, if followed correctly, will result in the perfect novel, written in one clean draft, polished and ready to be snapped up by an ecstatic agent who vows it will sell within minutes of taking it on.

It’s a pipe dream, I know.  But I’m still looking for that system.  I want a good repeatable process that turns out the best book I can write, one after another.  Reading give me a glimpse into the process that other writers follow.  Into how they think and get through the rough spots.

From Heather, I learned that she has learned to make writing part of her every day life.  That she loves books and even sleeps with them scattered about her bed.  That she waited a long time to call herself “Writer”.  That she has doubts about her own abilities, but keeps on writing anyway. That sounds a lot like me.

One of the greatest mantras to remember as a writer is written on page 115.  “The most important talent might be the talent for practice itself.”  In this chapter, Heather talks about developing the habit of practicing your writing.  Of doing it regularly, just like musicians, and athletes, and dancers.  We all assume that because we learn to speak and write early in life, we are automatically qualified to be a writer.  But the truth is that writing takes a lot of practice.  And one of the best kept secrets?  A writer who practices writing faithfully can often be more successful than a really talented writer who only writes when the mood strikes him.  There’s much to be said for dogged persistence and Heather encourages the reader to practice writing.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  Anyone who is looking for a positive, happy writing life.  If your writing has been drudgery and you have to drag yourself to your writing chair, pick up Page After Page and see if it doesn’t put some fun back into your writing.

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