The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspirations for Writing

"The Pocket Muse", despite its name, is not really small enough to fit in your pocket (although it'll easily fit into your backpack, purse, or bag). It has an odd black-and-olive color scheme that I actually came to love after a while. Black and white photos are scattered throughout, and they're quite well reproduced. Suggestions are presented sideways, right-side-up, at an angle, on (reproduced) tacked-up notes, luggage tags, and index cards. There are suggestions and exercises. Sentences with blanks to fill in. Ruminations on elements of writing. Little horoscopes you can apply to your characters. Quotes from writers that don't duplicate the quotes I've seen in all the other writing books! (Monica Wood promised this would be the case in the introduction, and to be honest I didn't believe her. I do now.) There's fire and enthusiasm, and a deep understanding of the writing life and what it takes to not only survive it, but enjoy and thrive in it. Her "ten commandments for a happy writing life" and her recommendations for handling rejections are spot-on. I have not a single complaint about this book, except perhaps that I'd like to take every single page and put it on a card in a deck. Then on any given day I could shuffle the deck and draw a card or two. There are a lot of things in writing books that bug me--bits of advice I don't agree with. Condescending attitudes toward new & developing writers that annoy me. Ways of approaching things that, really, everyone else has already done a hundred times over. Instead, in "The Pocket Muse" you'll just find lots of fun, bushels of inspiration, and plenty of things to think about!

This little book is a wonder in itself. It is a combination book of philosopy, book of poetry, and book of inspirational ideas. It doesn't spell out a whole scene on every page that you are encouraged to write out yourself like other idea books...it gives you a tiny snippet of an idea that you can springboard off into your own writing journey. It does have some neat little stories and poems that are less than 1 1/2 pages long, has gorgeous black and white pictures that can prompt your imagination into a story or memory of your own, and the subtle, gentle push by the author through out the book for you to go ahead and 'take the plunge, write...!" is ambiguous enough to not sound like your mother nagging at you to get a chore done. I like the fact the book is small--five x seven inches--and easily thrown into a purse or coat pocket. Well done, Ms. Wood!

Some of the ideas are simple. Some make you slap yourself and say "why didn't I think of that?!" Some of the ideas you thought of already but Monica Wood put a new twist on them. The book is full of inspiring flotsam and wonderful tidbits of ideas that will get your brain thinking and maybe even your heart feeling a little more. This handy little treasure shows you that writing is not just about thinking up a great idea, but it is about observing the great ideas that are around you already.

This is a wonderful gift book for the writer in your life. Inside the pages, you'll find photographs-- some cute, some beautiful-- and tidbits of advice about writing and prompts to spark your creativity.The book has a likable randomness to it; you can open it to any page and just read until you feel like writing again. Some pages have fairly lengthy anecdotes, and others are just a few lines long, with instructions like "Write about a simple board game that turns its players into pie-eyed cutthroats" and "Take two people you know who seem to be opposites in every way. Think about them until you hit on something they have in common. Start writing."It fulfills the promise of its title: it is, indeed, a handy little dose of inspiration. It's upbeat without being cloying, encouraging without being unrealistic, and full of very do-able exercises. I recommend this book as a gift because it applies to all writers; all of us have times when the Inspiration Fairy just seems to have flown away, and this book speaks to that. It won't teach you how to be a better writer-- it'll just entice you to set pen to paper again in a friendly coach-ish sort of way. My only complaint is that my fingerprints show on the glossy colored pages. Is that a stupid complaint? I'm petty like that. But it's still the kind of book that's fun to have around...