Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True » (Reprint)

A former nurse with a caretaker's eye for the details of needing and being needed, Elizabeth Berg doesn't shy from the "women's writer" association. She writes with humor and sympathy about the small earthquakes upending women's lives and their extraordinary, human ways of setting things right again.

Elizabeth Berg touches women's lives with heartbreakingly funny and true novels — including the New York Times bestseller Talk Before Sleep — that distinctly capture the essence of their lives. Now this critically acclaimed author and writing instructor offers an inspiring, practical handbook on the joys, challenges, and creative possibilities inherent in the writing life.

Both autobiography and primer, Escaping into the Open interweaves Elizabeth Berg's story of her own journey from working mother to published novelist with encouraging advice on how to create stories that spring from deep within the heart.

With wit and honesty, Elizabeth Berg provides numerous exercises that will unleash individual creativity and access and utilize all of the senses. Most important, she tells how to fire passion — emotion — into writing itself; to break through personal barriers and reach one's own outer limits and beyond.

Stephanie von Hirschberg

All the qualities that I have loved in [Elizabeth Berg's] fiction are here in great, generous dollops: intimacy, honesty and humor, and that feeling that you are hanging out with your best friend who is confiding amazing stories to you. I would recommend this book to anyone in the grip of the writing muse.