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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.042071
EAN num: 9780385499194
ISBN number: 0385499191
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: April 17, 2001
Publishing house: Anchor
Release Date: April 17, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 400807
Studio: Anchor
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
An innovative new approach to teaching and writing creative nonfiction from veteran teacher and critically acclaimed author Carol Bly.
Teachers and writers everywhere are facing the limits imposed by the prevailing models of teaching: community or MFA “workshops” or, at the high-school level, “peer review.” In Beyond the Writers' Workshop Carol Bly presents an alternative. She believes that
workshopping’s tendency to engage in wry scorn and pay exaggerated attention to technical details, causes apprentice writers, consciously or unconsciously, to modify their most passionate work.
Inspired by a philosophy of individuality and moral rigor, Bly combines ideas and techniques from social work, psychotherapy, and neuroscience with the traditional teaching of fresh metaphor, salient dialogue, lively pace, and analysis of other literary work in her pioneering new approach. She also includes exercises and examples in an extensive practical appendix.
Amazon.com Review:
Many books about writing nonfiction are actually spiritual-quest road maps. They might call themselves writing guides, but they have more to do with self-help than writing. While those books certainly have their place, it is bracing to come across one that's more stringent about words on the page. In Beyond the Writers' Workshop, Carol Bly rails against what she sees as a state of cultural deprivation in the United States. She calls on all writers and their teachers to remove 'as many of the influences and instruments or conventions that cause 'dumbing down' as we can.' Elementary-school teaching, says Bly (who also wrote The Passionate, Accurate Story), is so focused on making sure the children have fun that they don't have a chance to take themselves seriously; MFA students get stuck 'writing decorative humbug'; and older-adult writers are predisposed to penning affectionate, empty memoirs.
Bly's aim is to help writers deepen their writing. She argues for formality, both in the writing and in the classroom: it makes the writing more potent and acts as 'a weapon against smirking.' She is a strong believer in empathic questioning; has chapters on stage-development philosophy and neuroscience; and recommends that writers sharpen their prose by 'scouring off wormy style,' questioning any 'shopworn observation,' and recalling 'peculiar details that no one else could fake.' The 15 writing exercises at the back of the book will likely send writers digging inward. And though Bly criticizes the dispassionate 'museumgoer' mentality, she claims that it is good for a writer to be a generalist. 'The more material you have to work with,' she says, 'the more likely you are to produce fresh, unexpected connections.' --Jane Steinberg
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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While I enjoyed the way Bly writes in this book on creative non-fiction, I didn't find it to be of much help. She constantly points out the "dumbing down" of American society and the lack of care taken when teaching creative writing. Her rants belittle the reader, acting as if the reader doesn't know the horrors in education or in America. I agree with her on both points, but I feel as though she never gives a solution. While it did spark a little inspiration in me, it wasn't a good read. I suppose if that was her point in writing this book, then she succeeded, but it was dull and lacked innovation.
Rated by buyers 
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I kind of fell over this book in Barnes and Noble one day and bought it despite its antiseptic and uninspiring title! I loved it. Reading it, I felt I was in the company of this insightful, challenging teacher, and, as a writer and a person, I felt greatly nourished by this book. She does what so few classes can: she transmits values. I'm so grateful I found it.
Rated by buyers 
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Though the cover says the book is about writing creative nonfiction, it's not. It's about teaching creative writing. The demands on writers of creative nonfiction are somewhat different - such as the idea that creative nonfiction is based in truth, where fiction has no such requirement. None of that is addressed here.
However, the things that were presented are somewhat hypocritical and contradictory. For example, after reading a previous review, I didn't believe it until I looked at page 22 myself. Her opinions that blithely bash someone else's faith have no place in a book on writing. What's most disturbing is how, after giving her own offensive bigotry and insensitivity free reign here, she preaches ideas like inclusiveness throughout the rest of the book!
I have been a victim of the very type of overly criticial writing teacher she warns against (particularly after I was published), and though I can appreciate her attempts to prevent more of the same, I find the hypocrisy here diminishes her credibility. I'm not sure that I'd find a "politically correct," somewhat formless teacher of the type she promotes any more beneficial.
Rated by buyers -
My feeling after reading this book was that if I'd had a teacher like Carol Bly it would have changed my life. Not just my writing--that, too--but my life. It's worth reading this book to be in the company of a stringent thinker and ethicist.
Rated by buyers -
This is a terrific book. Don't be fooled by the title. The book has useful and interesting things to say to anyone who writes or teaches writing or wants to do those things.
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