Continuing series of book reviews for writers, with a review of Dani Shapiro’s ‘Still Writing’. I am seeing an exhibitionist element to her work which I am ambivalent about. I suppose most writers want to have their work read. So that ‘look at me’ element is always there. Lately I notice social media posts that offend, or tease, or suggest more than they ever really deliver. This ‘click bait’ is getting better, but I am also getting better at seeing it. Does Shapiro use some of that uncomfortable material to get readers to keep reading? Yes. I happened to see she had a podcast, and I mistakenly thought it was a writers podcast. Instead it is a continuation of her ideas about sharing ‘Family Secrets’. Mining the dirt and the hurt. This appeals to the voyeur in each of us. I found it a little sad. And not the writing advice I was looking for.
There is an idea, which I don’t share, that a person must have experienced some sort of trauma to be a great artist. That only by having been beaten, sexually abused, subject to prejudicial words or actions, grown up in poverty both financial and worldly, buttonholed into a ghetto of some sort, will a writer have the life experience to become great. I think the exact opposite. This kind of background normally precludes a person from great work of any sort. As Virginia Woolf points out in ‘A Room of One’s Own’, every great writer or poet, save Keats, came from a rich family. Struggling to overcome such handicaps usually sidelines any great work. And if not, the writer carries an agenda, of anger, fear, or even hate, that will shade and affect all of their work. Which is not to say we shouldn’t encourage art by everyone, but to suggest it is the only path to great literature is most assuredly false.
A writer must be honest, a point most writing books make. And writing ‘What you know’ is common advice. Not being afraid of what you see, and not averting your eyes, are prerequisites.
There is a lot to admire in ‘Still Writing’. The chapters are short, pithy, and easy to digest. I mostly read a chapter or two each morning in bed. I especially liked ‘Tribe’, the finding of a writer’s community.
I enjoyed this book, and will put it on the shelf with other ‘Emotional Support’ writing books I have, like Dorothea Brande’s ‘Becoming a Writer’, Ursual K. Le Guin’s ‘Steering the Craft’, Anne Lamott’s ‘Bird by Bird’, Brenda Ueland’s ‘If You Want to Write’ or Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. Mediocre writers seem to push out tons of material, while great writers seem to be full of self doubt and suffer impostor syndrome. Shapiro’s book, and all these others, helps writers get through this struggle, and help them know they are not alone.

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January 31, 2025 at 11:26 AM

ISBN 978-0-8021-6229-8

Review of ‘Still Writing’ by Dani Shapiro