Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives » (1ST BEACON)

Louise DeSalvo, author of Vertigo: A Memoir and Virginia Woolf: Sexual Abuse in Her Life and Work, is professor of English at Hunter College.

Highly acclaimed author and teacher Louise DeSalvo offers the first detailed writing program designed for healing. DeSalvo shows how anyone can use writing as a way to overcome the emotional and physical wounds that arn an inevitable part of life. She culls journals, diaries, letters, and works of dozens of famouns writers and students of the craft to illustrate how people "change physically and psychologically when they work on projects that grow from a deep, authentic place." With insight and with, she illuminates how the writing process has transformed authors such as Virginia Woolf, Henry Miller, Audre Lorde, and Isabel Allende. WRITING AS A WAY OF HEALING gives valuable advice and practical techniques to guide and inpsire both experienced and beginning writers.

Library Journal

A professor of creative writing at Hunter College and a frequent guest on National Public Radio, DeSalvo (Vertigo: A Memoir, LJ 7/96) brings 20 years of writing experience to this work. She recommends writing in spare moments, uncensored, and asks her students to write five pages per week. She advises writing every detail as a reporter to move beyond a trauma. Writing links feelings of pain, grief, and loss to an event and speeds healing. DeSalvo presents seven stages of writing, from preparation/germination to completion/going public. She suggests writing a process journal so the work flows smoothly and warns against self-sabotage in the form of missed deadlines and last-minute scrambling. When the writing is completed, sharing stories in a group with other empathetic writers will sharpen the narrative. DeSalvos work is similar to Julia Camerons The Right To Write (LJ 1/99), though more academic. Camerons work is recommended for public libraries, while DeSalvos is better for higher-level writing classes.Lisa S. Wise, Broome Cty. P.L., Binghamton, NY