From the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longings: an intimate work on the mysteries, frustrations, and triumphs of being a writer, and an instructive guide to awakening the soul.
When Sue Monk Kidd was in high school, a home economics teacher wrote a list of potential occupations for women on the blackboard: teacher, nurse, librarian, secretary. “Writer” was nowhere to be found. On that day, Kidd shut the door on her writerly aspirations and would not revisit the topic until many years later when she announced to her husband and two children that she was going to become a writer. And so began her journey into the mysteries and methods of the writerly life…
In Writing Creativity and Soul, Sue Monk Kidd will pull from her own life and the lives of other writers—Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Harper Lee, and many others—to provide a map for anyone who has ever felt lost as a writer. At the heart of this book is the unwavering belief that writing is a spiritual act, one that draws inspiration from the soul, that wellspring of creativity between imagination and feeling. Once you tap into that part of yourself, said Maya Angelou, there are only three more things you need as a writer: something to say, the ability to say it, and, perhaps most difficult of all, the courage to say it.
Equal parts memoir, guidebook, and spiritual quest, Writing Creativity and Soul is a pilgrimage and a touchstone, a journey into the transformational force of the imagination and the creative genius that lies in the unconscious.
“Kidd returns with a soul-searching meditation on her journey as a writer and her approach to storytelling. . . . A lyrical read and a generous companion for writers, especially those seeking depth in the process.” —Booklist
“Kidd is one of America’s most evocative memoirists of the spirit. Her new book looks back over a life of writing to explore the nature of human creativity and the urge we have not just to do something but to make something. Kidd digs deep into the archetypes of consciousness. . . . Memory becomes a box of precious finds. Kidd can write some of the lushest clauses in American prose. She can also write a simple declarative sentence. At such points of contact, writing thrills. But it can also heal the fractures in our lives. A gorgeous memoir of the creative life, designed to bring out the writer’s voice in all of us.” —Kirkus (starred review)
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