Still Writing
The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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Narrated by:
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Dani Shapiro
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By:
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Dani Shapiro
About this listen
"Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers, and everyone in between." (Jennifer Egan)
From Dani Shapiro, best-selling author of Devotion and Slow Motion, comes a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling. At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Still Writing is an intimate companion to living a creative life. Writers - and anyone with an artistic temperament - will find inspiration and comfort here. Offering lessons learned over 20 years of teaching and writing, Shapiro shares her own revealing insights to weave an indispensable almanac for modern writers.
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Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
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A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
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This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Together, these essays, previously published in The Atlantic, Harper, Vogue, and The Washington Post, form a resonant portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love.
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Entertaining, engrossing, and elucidative essays
- By Bonny on 01-07-14
By: Ann Patchett
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The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
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Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
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Bookworm
- A Memoir of Childhood Reading
- By: Lucy Mangan
- Narrated by: Lucy Mangan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. She was whisked away to Narnia and Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy and played by the tracks with the Railway Children.
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The author’s sarcasm
- By Phil B. on 10-01-24
By: Lucy Mangan
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The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
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She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
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Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
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The Three Marriages
- Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
- By: David Whyte
- Narrated by: David Whyte
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
According to Whyte, we humans are involved not just with one marriage with a significant other. We also have made secret vows to our work and unspoken vows to an inner, constantly developing self. Whyte's thesis is that to separate these marriages in order to balance them is to destroy the fabric of happiness itself; that in each of these marriages, will, effort, and hard work are overused, overrated, and in many ways self-defeating.
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RARE SELF-HELP BOOK THAT ACTUALLY HELPS
- By Elizabeth on 03-05-09
By: David Whyte
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Process
- The Writing Lives of Great Authors
- By: Sarah Stodola
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, and more. In Process, acclaimed journalist Sarah Stodola examines the creative methods of literature's most transformative figures. Each chapter contains a mini biography of one of the world's most lauded authors, focused solely on his or her writing process.
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Excellent!
- By Davina Rush on 04-10-15
By: Sarah Stodola
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Even in the most mundane moments, this sings
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Right in the Chops!
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Even in the most mundane moments, this sings
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Depressing, poorly read
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Dull
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The Language of the Night
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Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator.
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Natalie Goldberg has been writing for the past fifty years. But at the beginning of the pandemic, she suddenly wasn’t able to write anymore. Her imaginative wellspring had dried up, and she was forced to ask herself: what do I do when what has always worked for me doesn’t work anymore? In this beautifully written, inspiring personal account, Natalie shares her harrowing journey out of creative paralysis and back onto the page.
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Over a decade ago, when Writing Down the Bones first appeared, Natalie Goldberg started a revolution in the way we practice writing. Now, for the first time, Goldberg reads her classic work, while offering new commentary about the creative, spiritual, and practical dimensions of writing. This collector's edition also includes an exclusive interview with the author.
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On Writing
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“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999—and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery.
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Who needs a print edition when King reads King?
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By: Stephen King
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Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress, and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese, and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives, and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience.
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Only 5 Chapters
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By: Robert McKee
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Story Genius
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It's every novelist's greatest fear: pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into writing hundreds of pages only to realize that their story has no sense of urgency, no internal logic, and so is a page-one rewrite. The prevailing wisdom in the writing community is that there are just two ways around this problem: pantsing (winging it) and plotting (focusing on the external plot).
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As a fantasy writer, this book was not for me.
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By: Lisa Cron
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Bird by Bird
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- Unabridged
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For a quarter century, more than a million readers and listeners—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title.
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Why oh why did she narrate this?!
- By Amor Fati on 01-02-23
By: Anne Lamott
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The Art of Memoir
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- Unabridged
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Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told - and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.)
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Brilliant!
- By A. Potter on 01-18-16
By: Mary Karr
What listeners say about Still Writing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Pammie
- 07-02-24
Reading her book, the author assumes an off-putting "priestess voice."
Some good advice, interwoven with way too much personal story.
And reading her book in this Audible version, the author assumed an off-putting "priestess voice."
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- Hillwalker
- 11-15-24
Practical, heartfelt encouragement for the writing life
This book is a collection of short essays focused on various aspects of the experience of being a creative writer, from a celebrated novelist and memoirist. She generously takes us inside her daily writing process, her thoughts about writing, advice on how to approach and capture memory, the emotional ups and downs of writing, and how all of this is interwoven with daily family life. If you are trying to write, this book will help you to understand why it is so challenging and how to make it easier and more rewarding. It is also a love letter to creative self expression and to practitioners of the writing craft. Meditative, candid, grounded, and inspiring. Highly recommend.
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- Nick G
- 01-17-22
Phenomenal book on writing
Great book that cuts to the heart of why we write and how to improve our craft.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Reed Ramlow
- 01-18-21
Excellent account of the writing life
An inspirational account of the writing life, and a useful guide for any aspiring writer. Dani Shapiro is a writer I’d like to meet in a coffeeshop, and talk more about what she wrote, but I’d probably be a bit awestruck. No matter, she’s not full of herself. She wants to help us. Fail better, friends. Recommended for any aspiring writer, especially the Audible version, narrated by Dani herself.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-29-22
Just What I Needed
Your book was supportive and encouraging for those of us who haven’t yet had the courage to step out as writers. I’m someone who has read few books in my life until I found audible three years ago. Your book is one of my favorites and will be shared with my writer-want-to-be friends. I have joined a small group of individuals who are sharing our secret desires to write. I personally identified with many of your descriptions of those of us who have the inner yearning to make peace with ourselves by putting words on paper (or creating digital text). I plan to listen to your book again…and maybe even a third time!
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- Laura Maher
- 08-16-23
A solid memoir about doing the work
Dani Shapiro gives it to us straight: do the work, maintain good habits and consistency, get out of your own way, and don’t fall in love with your own work. She’s just the person to write this.
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- Jane B Nurnberg
- 10-02-23
Wonderful, from her heart with kindness
Wonderfully written, interesting, wise, and informative. I will restart this at the beginning and listen again. There is plenty here and I want to hear all this again.
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- Raquel
- 10-22-21
Inspiring but dark, better to read than listen
This book has a lot of insightful advice both from her and from other writers. I ended up bookmarking and sharing some of my favorites. I also found the sections about the process of writing and the discipline needed very helpful and inspiring. But it was also a depressing story in places and hard to get through. She goes into her terrible childhood with her selfish, narcissistic mother and depressed father enough to call this a memoir as much as a book about writing. At times, the tone was deeply cynical. It may be the narrator's take on the author's words - it's hard to say whether the author's own voice would sound so depleted, even snarky. I'd recommend reading it rather than listening.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Elisa R. Goodman
- 10-19-20
It's a Hard-Knock Life...
My dog-eared paperback copy of this book sits on a table next to my bed - it's always a great go-to read before I fall asleep. Little bite-size chapters that contain nuggets of creative tricks and practical ways to keep you focused and in the zone when you are trying to write – an elusive endeavor, which Dani warns, is not for the faint of heart. Like most creative pursuits: acting • dancing • music • art • writing - your soul is alive with possibility and you can't imagine doing anything else.
I'm very grateful Dani decided to record this and her first memoir, SLOW MOTION, for Audible during the Pandemic. As I listen to them, I am re-visiting her written words - but I am also LISTENING to HER as she narrates her own words and personal stories. She has been at this practice for a long time now and her advice comes with an EDGE. A protective EDGE. A warning EDGE. A knowing EDGE. An EDGE because her life has gifted her with words she has been able to splice together into a verbal reckoning. Writers beware. The EDGE of someone who now creatively thrives in the silence of the country – and who could not have known at the time she wrote STILL WRITING (but does have that perspective as she reads her book) that literary notoriety would propel her into the spotlight in 2019 – when her memoir, INHERITANCE, became a New York Times Bestseller and inspired the hit podcast, FAMILY SECRETS and sent Ancestry.com stock through the roof!
Some of us are social hermits who enjoy the solitude that allows us to think, thrive, and create - and yet, many of us also need to come out of isolation and come up for air to find, as she recently posted on Instagram, "pockets of joy," whenever we can. I'm a huge fan of Dani's work and there are great life lessons here for staying present, noticing your surroundings, adjusting to the discomfort of creative isolation – and knowing that "pockets of joy" can be found in the creation process if we can just manage to center ourselves for the courageous discipline it takes to mine the veins of our imagination.
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- Jacqueline J. Johnson
- 04-06-22
Beautiful, useful and encouraging
I loved this book - particularly the meditations - but then come to think of it- the whole thing is a meditation
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