Room to Write

Bonnie Goldberg called her compact writing workbook Room to Write, she says, "because each page is a door into one of the places from which creative writing emerges: imagination, emotion, intellect, and soul." The phrase "room to write," she adds, "also refers to creating room for your writing." Goldberg provides 200 of the page-long writing lessons, "designed to be reusable," which offer as many different ways to get into your writing. Each discusses an aspect of life and writing, followed by an assignment and an inspirational quotation from a writer or other creator. Though Goldberg tends toward the spiritual, her assignments involving things such as snot and bathrooms keep the book grounded as well. Among the more interesting assignments here are those that have you "write about the first time words profoundly affected you"; "write only lies"; "retrieve an unspoken exchange and have it out on the page"; "be exhaustive in your detailing of something ordinary, like a teaspoon"; and "write about some quality in yourself you are not proud of." --Jane Steinberg