Write for Your Life by Anna Quindlen
I’m sure as avid readers you’ve probably read and enjoyed many books by Anna Quindlen. I know I have devoured her fiction but Write for Your Life is different. It’s not fiction, it’s more of a love letter to letter writing and journaling, a sort of commentary. Considering Quindlen won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1992, you my friends, are in the most capable hands.
In Write for Your Life Quindlen highlights diaries like that of Anne Frank but emphasizes how important our own act of journaling can be for ourselves not just as writers but as humans. She discusses the effect technology will have in our histories and how impactful it is to see the actual written words (even the crossed-out words) of someone like Dickens. She recognizes how something that is written by hand brings forth a much more personal connection than something typed on a typewriter or tapped into a keyboard.
As a writer I loved Write for Your Life and the importance Quindlen gives to the act of writing, how journaling allows us to tap into our true selves, not feel so alone.
From page 12 “writing is a kind of handshake or embrace: Hello, I see you. I want to know you and understand you. I want to understand myself.”
I love that Write for Your Life recognizes how intimate and personal a handwritten note can be. How seeing and touching the ink on the paper that captured the way that person crossed their t’s or slanted their M’s can be so connecting. After losing my cousin at the age of 48, I came across a note she wrote me years ago. It wasn’t the content of the note that was special (although that was too) it was that she had touched that paper and moved her pen over and under in that way that was uniquely and beautifully hers. It was part of her, left for me. What an amazing gift.
Write for Your Life by Anna Quindlen is also a gift, to writers, readers, historians, and humans. Should you wish to purchase or share with someone you love --You can find it easily here
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