Walking on Alligators

Susan Shaughnessy began her writing career as a copywriter and editor. She has written two novels, magazine and newsletter articles, speeches, songs, and advertising copy. In Walking on Alligators, Shaughnessy gathers the thoughts of many authors and combines them with stimulating essays as "a daily motivator for people who write and people who long to write." The author cautions that writing is about today--not procrastination, but writing every single day. She sees her book as a daily companion for the writer. Quick to point out that the book was not intended as a quick read, Shaughnessy offers "200 thought-and pen provoking essays exploring every aspect of the practice and process of writing." Within these 200 pages, Toni Morrison, Camille Paglia, Diane Ackerman, Anne Rice, Scott Turow, Jane Smiley, Erica Jong, Eudora Welty, and many others are quoted on the subject of writing and creativity. Each quote is followed by a short essay by Shaughnessy and a challenge/affirmation to help the reader reach his or her writing goals. The profound messages of these daily meditations spark me to aim higher and push farther in my daily attempts at the writing life. Each essay spoke to me in a deeply personal way. Every time I thought one surely was the best of the bunch, another one jumped off the page and danced through my inner core. A couple of my many favorites appear on a page that I have dog-eared in this handy little paperback: "When the stuff in life gets really rough, I would just die if I was not writing a novel. Once you think it up, it's like a whole other city with a little door and every time you sit down to write you just open the door and there you are--a wonderful vacation for two hours." --Lee Smith "Today, I'll try a new attitude toward my writing. I'll view it as a vacation from life. I'll see how that feels." --Susan Shaughnessy This particular page holds a profound truth that resonates deep within my writer-self. I have affirmed this same thought pattern time and time again. Even now, as I recouperate from surgery for recurrent malignant melanoma, I tell my friends and family that my daily writing is my lifeline as the challenges of life swirl frenetically around me. Each takes only a few minutes to read. But when read with purpose, these daily meditations and essays linger in your mind and in your writer's soul all day, every day. Just like the drive to write daily that comes from spending time with Shaughnessy's encouraging book. You can approach this book day by day in numerical sequence, or you may choose to open it at random to see what message awaits you on any given day. Either way, you are sure to find good company in what is otherwise a lonely path for many--the writing path. Tuck this little book someplace handy, and it is sure to become a cherished writing companion. One more favorite... "Today I will have the courage to go wherever my writing wants to lead me. I will not judge as I write. I will write,

Susan Shaughnessy's "Walking On Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers" (HarperCollins; paperback; 203 pp.), is a hard-edged gem of a book that cuts to the often-irritated quick of the writing life.Via her dually-delivered doses of other people's observations -- mots both juste and justified, whether from familiar figures or unexpected sources -- and her own pithy commentary, the willy and witty Shaughnessy again and again lays a prickly grid of reality over the nebulous field of endeavor in which I toil, rendering it in clearer focus. I've been working at the word trade for nearly 30 years as reporter, feature writer, and documentary filmmaker. I punched through the first 20 of those years without benefit of access to "Alligators." If I'd been able to avail myself earlier of the insights codified by Shaughnessy in her 1993 volume, I'd have been a wiser and perhaps better writer at a younger age. I'd certainly have avoided or at least short-circuited many of the soul-grinding, spirit-stifling, energy-draining habits of mind and contractual entanglements that dot the terrain of freelance writing like so many plastic anti-personnel mines.Last fall, while teaching a Smithsonian Associates course on feature writing, I held up my copy of "Walking On Alligators" and told my students, "Get a copy of this book and read it. Even if you don't go on to become a writer, you'll be a better person for having read it." I say the same thing now to you.

I own two -- one copy for home -- and one for the office. Shaughnessy's book inspires me when I catch myself doing something other than the writing I'm supposed to be doing. And it does so with succinct, motivational, and sometimes philosophical paragraphs. Walking on Alligators is one of my top books for gift-giving, ever since I bought my first copies a few years go.

I bought this book two years ago and I read it daily as a meditation. Whether or not I write every day, it always keeps me focused on what I need to do, which is to write. I find it inspirational and encouraging no matter where you are with writing. It covers all the fears and phobias any writer or creator might have. A great resource!

It's been awhile since I read excerpts from this book, but the general message of the book remains with me...one sign of an effective book. It's the kind of book you keep on your desk and pick up when you need that kick in the pants to get back to writing. The author understands and says just the 'write' thing! Buy one for yourself, and for a friend who keeps wistfully saying, "I really want to get serious about writing someday...."