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    Because You Have To: A Writing Life
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    Because You Have To: A Writing Life
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    Because You Have To: A Writing Life
    Ebook234 pages2 hours

    Because You Have To: A Writing Life

    By Joan Frank

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Part memoir, part handbook, part survey of the contemporary literary scene, Joan Frank’s Because You Have To: A Writing Life is a collection of essays that, taken together, provide a walking tour of the writing life. Frank’s aim is to form a coherent vision, one that may provide some communion about realities of the writer's vocation that have struck her as rarely revealed.

    Frank offers what she has learned as a writer not only to other writers, but to those to whom good writing matters. Her insights about "thinking on paper" are never dogmatic or pontifical; rather, they are cordial and intellectually welcoming.

    Original, witty, and practical, Frank ably steers us through the journey of her own life as a writer, as well as through the careers and work of other writers. Her subjects range widely, from the “boot camp” conditioning of marketing work to squaring off with rejection and envy; from sustaining belief in art’s necessity to the baffling subjectivity of literary perception and the magical books that nourish writers. Frank’s personal journey is wonderfully told, so that what in these essays is particular becomes useful and universal.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Notre Dame Press
    Release dateSep 15, 2012
    ISBN9780268079765
    Unavailable
    Because You Have To: A Writing Life
    Author

    Joan Frank

    Joan Frank is the award-winning author of twelve books of literary fiction and essays including Because You Have To: A Writing Life and Try to Get Lost: Essays on Travel and Place (UNM Press). She lives with her husband, playwright Bob Duxbury, in the North Bay Area of California.

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    Reviews for Because You Have To

    3.5/5

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    • 5/5
      With The Husband's recent cancer treatments, surgery, and recovery, much that makes up our everyday lives got rearranged and shifted. In November, I learned that life is not business as usual during such times - even with family driving several hours to help.

      In November, the month of The Cancer, not many books were read. (But this one was one of them.) Nor did many reviews get written. Best laid plans, and all that. Apologies were sent to authors via Facebook and, thankfully, gratefully accepted.

      So this review, then, is one of them - a little later than promised, but I say all this as preamble because it somehow kind of fits with Joan Frank's Because You Have To: A Writing Life. It seems odd to have been reading a book on writing during a time when I had absolutely zero of it to write much of anything other than a grocery list, much less write a sentence of a novel (especially during a month when I looked wistfully on as everyone else was NaNo-ing their hearts and hair out).

      But in a way, Because You Have To was probably one of the most perfect books for me to read at this time.

      That's because Joan Frank gets this writing life in a way that is so authentic and real, and this comes across the pages as easily as if you are sharing several hours - and stories and knowing nods - over a cup of coffee or tea. She is that understanding friend who doesn't tell you how to write but rather commiserates with you about all the ways that being a writer is simultaneously wonderful, exhausting, satisfying, frustrating, freeing, and ever-changing.

      Because You Have To appears to be a slim book but it is one that is packed full with a treasure trove of advice. Perhaps advice is the wrong word. None of this is preachy or heavy-handed. Instead, in a book that has been described as part-memoir, Frank shares what has and hasn't worked. For her.

      With an abundance of quotes from other writers and enough anecdotes that the reader knows that Frank has been in the trenches, it is all here: on finding the time during one's day to write; on getting rejected and getting published; the "spit and Band-Aids" business of writing (applying for grants, submitting proposals); on telling people that you're a writer and everything that this entails (it's not always a glamorous reaction); on different writing styles and rituals; on establishing friendships with other writers and the occasional jealousy and envy that can arise in light of others' success; on the pros and cons of writing communities (writing groups, MFA programs); on reviewing books (including those from well-meaning friends) and on responding to negative reviews as a writer (a section that a few more authors on certain social media sites would be well advised to read).

      She also explores reading - for it's a given that writers should (must) read - and Frank provides enough quotes from influential books and authors in her own life to fill up several more. She discusses literary trends, the future of the book itself, and the trickiness of recommending books to friends.

      In addition to Because You Have To: A Writing Life, Joan Frank is the author of two story collections (In Envy Country and Boys Keep Being Born) and three novels (Make It Stay, The Great Far Away, and Miss Kansas City). She has won literary awards and is quite accomplished, yet she comes across as completely down-to-earth.

      This book presents the writing life as it is: unvarnished, a bit rough, but ours for what we want to make of it. I absolutely loved this and as such, this will absolutely be on my favorite nonfiction books list for 2012. If there are any writers on your holiday gift list, you won't go wrong getting them a copy of this book. It goes right up there with Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and The Writer's Survival Guide by Rachel Simon as among my favorite books by writers for writers.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this, and now I cannot fathom why. While the first handful of essays were interesting and occasionally insightful, the book soon descended into literary-fiction hipster pretentiousness. Okay, yes, fine, literary authors are allowed to have their books too. I just never realized how utterly remote they are from my experience.
    • 3/5
      My family likes to ask me when I'm going to write my bestselling novel. My husband tells me he'd be perfectly happy to have me support him in the lap of luxury through my writing. The loveliest thing about these questions is that they are in earnest. They really believe that I not only have a book in me but that my writing is fantastic and that of course the whole world would buy whatever I wrote. The reality of it though is that no matter what my writing is like good, bad, or indifferent, I know and understand the publishing world too well to think that anything about the process as they see it is likely (nevermind the discipline I currently lack in terms of actually writing an entire book). If I had any ideas left about the glamour of a writing life, and having been the intern in charge of wading through the slush pile at a small publisher many, many years ago, I really don't, this collection of essays by Joan Frank, musings on various different aspects of being a writer, reviewer, and reader, would certainly bring me back to reality.Written over many years and previously published elsewhere, these essays pulled together here represent the good and the bad, the sublime and the frustrating, the victories and the disappointments inherent in choosing, nay, in being compelled to live the life of a writer. Frank is a published author of five novels, essays, and short stories so she knows from whence she writes. She has spent years eking out a living as an administrative assistant in order to be able to afford to pursue her passion, even if only in the margins of her life. Despite her relative success, she is not a household name; she is not offered million dollar contracts; she still has to scramble to find a publisher for the next book; she still has to deliberately carve out writing time from the rest of her life. In short, Joan Frank is a literary fiction author who writes because she must, despite the numerous downsides to such a need, drive, compulsion.Frank not only writes about the ways in which so many writers' actual writing must compete for time with everything else but also about rejection, the loneliness of writing as an occupation, the lack of money available to those lucky enough to see their work through to book form, the lack of effective concrete advice on how to put words worth reading down on paper, the work and disappointment involved in trying to find a publisher or agent, the way literary writers must always play the odds but still most often come up one number short, writing reviews and in turn facing reviews of her own works, and how writers are readers and lovers of books. She is honest and clear about the disadvantages of being a writer but just by the simple act of writing this book, she is also clear that writers write regardless of the myriad negatives. Her love for her craft and for books as a whole, even in the midst of struggle or envy or dejection, shines through as well. This is not a writing how-to manual nor is it intended to be such. It is instead a collection of contemplative essays about the reality of Frank's writing and reading life and the way that her particular experiences mirror those of so many other authors out there currently writing. There is a bit of repetition in some of the essays, even extremely similar wording that brought me up short once or twice, as I read through this in essentially a single sitting, which would not be my recommendation. The essays would probably have more impact if allowed to settle and be considered one by one, read at a leisurely pace over many days. As Frank squeaks her writing in around the rest of life, I squeak my reading in and that was a disservice to this particular book. Those interested in the realities of life as a writer or who must write no matter what will thrill to this honest look at the big sacrifices and small soul-refreshing rewards of a writing life. And those who think that writing is easy and anyone can write a book, well, they should avoid this book at all costs unless they are ready to shatter the rose-colored glasses and embrace writing with every bit of their being as Frank has done, as real writers must.