Writing Toward Home

[This] is a book for the writer hidden or not so hidden in us all...It is a book for any age, to be read in little bits or all at once, and to be reread regularly. - Inland Here is a personal and compassionate book for everyone writers, poets, teachers, lovers of life, and especially those seeking to find their writing voices again or for the first time. It is an autobiographical travelogue moving from a volcano in Hawaii to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and places in between, with writing at its heart. Writing Toward Home offers practical advice on overcoming some of the obstacles writers of all ages face: writer's block, fear of rejection, confronting silencing critics in your head, finding the time to write. Each short chapter speaks to the larger truths about writing and how to truly live the writer's life: how to become more of a risk taker, how to excavate the past as a source, and how to become an acute observer of the world. Writing Toward Home is a book that will remind you-and help you remind your students-that the true source of writing is the creative self. In this fast culture when most people have so little time to do anything but menial tasks, it will jumpstart you, it will awaken to you the journey within, it will make you want to write.

An acclaimed poet and writer, GEORGIA HEARD is the author of Writing Toward Home: Tales and Lessons to Find Your Way (Heinemann, 1995), For the Good of the Earth and Sun: Teaching Poetry (Heinemann, 1989), and Creatures of Earth, Sea, and Sky, a book of poetry for young children. She has also published numerous essays on poetry and writing, and her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals. She speaks to thousands of people every year at conferences throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and also travels extensively as a writing consultant and poet-in-residence for schools and universities. Heinemann has also produced The Words of True Poems (1998), an audiotape on which Heard reads a selection of her favorite poems, prefacing each poem with a brief introductory comment on its uses in the classroom. Ms. Heard's work has appeared in numerous magazines and professional journals and she has been interviewed on National Public Radio's "P