Synopses & Reviews
In these tumultuous times, don't we all want to be heard? Who doesn't want to transform the world? And who doesn't harbor a secret ambition to write? Writing to Change the World is intended to help people who have a message they're passionate about to convey it clearly through writing. Inspired by a course of the same name that Mary Pipher taught at the University of Nebraska's National Summer Writers' Conference, this book encapsulates her years of experience as a writer and therapist, as well as her extensive knowledge of the craft of writing.
Writing to Change the World combines practical instruction with inspirational commentary, featuring personal anecdotes, memorable quotations from other writers, practical how-to advice, and stories about writers who have transformed society through their work. In addition to laying out the various steps of the writing process-brainstorming, writing, revising, and publishing-Pipher gives advice about specific forms of advocacy writing: op-ed pieces, letters, essays, speeches, and blogs. She inspires readers to take up their pens, while reflecting on the writer's responsibilities as a moral agent. This is a book that really can make a difference!
Review
“[Pipher] offers useful advice…[This] will encourage idealistic aspiring writers, who will surely find inspiration in her assertion that writing can change the world.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Pipher] brings astute analogies from her career as a therapist to the problem of how to begin writing.”
—Library Journal
Synopsis
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia, Another Country, and The Shelter of Each Other comes an inspirational book that shows how words can change the world.
Words are the most powerful tools at our disposal. With them, writers have saved lives and taken them, brought justice and confounded it, started wars and ended them. Writers can change the way we think and transform our definitions of right and wrong.
Writing to Change the World is a beautiful paean to the transformative power of words. Encapsulating Mary Pipher's years as a writer and therapist, it features rousing commentary, personal anecdotes, memorable quotations, and stories of writers who have helped reshape society. It is a book that will shake up readers' beliefs, expand their minds, and possibly even inspire them to make their own mark on the world.
About the Author
Mary Pipher, Ph.D., is the author of the number-one New York Times-bestselling Reviving Ophelia, as well as The Shelter of Each Other, Another Country, The Middle of Everywhere, and Letters to a Young Therapist. She was a Rockefeller Scholar, and received the American Psychological Association's Presidential Citation. Currently, she is a visiting professor in both the English and Psychology departments at the University of Nebraska.