Bringing the Soul Back Home
Author/Artist
Katya Williamson
Reviewer
Brynneth
Publisher
O Books
Price (GBP)
£11.99
Subject
Spirituality - General
Type
Non-Fiction Book
Purchase
Review
Cat thought this would be the perfect book for me to review, but it may also be the case that I am the worst imaginable reviewer, so please do bear that in mind!
Katya Williamson has done a lot of work teaching people how to write. This book brings together her experiences and approaches so that people can access them without having to attend a workshop. Her target audience is spiritual women who are not currently writing. Aside from the assumption that the reader is female, there’s no reason a bloke couldn’t read and appreciate her work.
Katya offers a series of exercises designed to empower people to write and tap their own creativity. The exercises are short, unintimidating, and appear in the context of encouraging information and ideas. I think a person buying this book and working through the exercises – alone or with friends – would very likely gain from the experience, especially if they had not hitherto been writing. If you are already in control of your creativity and comfortable wielding a pen, it may not be much help – but then again, the exercises may catch your imagination and take you to new places. Nearly a third of the book is given over to snippets of creative writing inspired by the exercises, which means a solitary writer has something to relate their own work to.
This is a book very much about writing for the joy of it and for spiritual growth. As such I think it has great merit. There are however a lot of comments about ‘your words being heard’ and I have a lingering niggle that the style of the book may be misleading for some.
This is absolutely not a book that will teach you how to be a writer, and there is a difference between doing it for pleasure, and doing it for money. I would encourage anyone to write, to explore their ideas and express their inspiration, but that is a world away from writing for a living, and Katya does not mention this. Her exercises are all ten minutes in length – they won’t fashion the discipline needed for more involved creations. The book will not teach you anything structural about how to write a poem, short story, play or novel. It will not teach you how to plan, research, revise, seek a publisher, market yourself or do any of the other unpleasantly workish and commercial activities involved in writing professionally. That may be as well. Such things are enough to put most sane people off even trying, and do not make for pleasant reading. As is usually the case, how useful this book is depends largely on what you were looking for, and how far along the path you are. For the right person, it could be tremendously helpful.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bringing-Soul-Back-Home-Consciousness/dp/1846942...Katya Williamson has done a lot of work teaching people how to write. This book brings together her experiences and approaches so that people can access them without having to attend a workshop. Her target audience is spiritual women who are not currently writing. Aside from the assumption that the reader is female, there’s no reason a bloke couldn’t read and appreciate her work.
Katya offers a series of exercises designed to empower people to write and tap their own creativity. The exercises are short, unintimidating, and appear in the context of encouraging information and ideas. I think a person buying this book and working through the exercises – alone or with friends – would very likely gain from the experience, especially if they had not hitherto been writing. If you are already in control of your creativity and comfortable wielding a pen, it may not be much help – but then again, the exercises may catch your imagination and take you to new places. Nearly a third of the book is given over to snippets of creative writing inspired by the exercises, which means a solitary writer has something to relate their own work to.
This is a book very much about writing for the joy of it and for spiritual growth. As such I think it has great merit. There are however a lot of comments about ‘your words being heard’ and I have a lingering niggle that the style of the book may be misleading for some.
This is absolutely not a book that will teach you how to be a writer, and there is a difference between doing it for pleasure, and doing it for money. I would encourage anyone to write, to explore their ideas and express their inspiration, but that is a world away from writing for a living, and Katya does not mention this. Her exercises are all ten minutes in length – they won’t fashion the discipline needed for more involved creations. The book will not teach you anything structural about how to write a poem, short story, play or novel. It will not teach you how to plan, research, revise, seek a publisher, market yourself or do any of the other unpleasantly workish and commercial activities involved in writing professionally. That may be as well. Such things are enough to put most sane people off even trying, and do not make for pleasant reading. As is usually the case, how useful this book is depends largely on what you were looking for, and how far along the path you are. For the right person, it could be tremendously helpful.