Breathing In, Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook

By Ralph Fletcher

Keeping a notebook may be the single best way to survive as a writer. It encourages a greater sensitivity to your world, inside and out. It serves as a haven for new ideas until they are strong and mature enough to face the harsh light of rational judgment. It gives you a quiet place to catch your breath and begin writing.

Breathing In, Breathing Out is a book for the writer in each one of us, however lost, however buried. Ralph Fletcher takes a probing look into the nature of a writer's notebook, examining what it is, how writers use it, and what makes it tick. You will discover why writers like Naomi Shihab Nye and Dorothy Allison consider their notebooks so important to the work they create. You will also read snippets from Fletcher's notebook, where he reveals the "displayed self" of a writer whose innermost workings he knows best.

To Fletcher, keeping a writer's notebook is as natural an activity as breathing so he has organized his book in a way that illuminates two basic aspects of the process. Breathing In refers to the way the notebook can serve as a receptacle for selected insights, lines, images, dreams, and fragments of conversations. In this way it helps you pay closer attention to your world. Breathing Out is intended to suggest the notebook as an ideal place to use what you have collected and spark your own original writing.

This book is for new writers as well as those who may have once loved to write but have lost the spark along the way. It will help you find a natural rhythm for using a notebook and in the process start living the life of a writer.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0435072277
• ISBN13: 9780435072278
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Kindergarten to Grade 12

Customer Reviews

Breath in Breathing In, Breathing Out

In Breathing In, Breathing Out, Ralph Fletcher empowers the reader with the concept of a writer's notebook. Through realistic and exposing examples, Fletcher shows not only the workings of his own writer's notebook but also those of other authors, published and non-published alike. Written in a logical order of digestible chapters, Fletcher guides his reader through what may be uncharted territory, ultimately succeeding at sharing his suggestions of nonconformity for writing. As a teacher, Fletcher's book has assisted me in not only rethinking my own writer's notebook but how I use writing notebooks in my classes as well. Though a good read, the limitations of Breathing In, Breathing Out are limited to classroom use, though with some hands-on application work it easily could be adapted for any classroom.

Easy Read

Fletcher leads the reader through the value of keeping a writer's notebook in his easy read Breathing In, Breathing Out. He offers valuable insights, experiences and ideas as to how to begin, keep, and find inspiration for a writer's notebook. Although this book does not lay out practical applications for the classroom, it does speak easily to those who like to write.

A good resource for writers.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was the price. A writer's notebook, or what I refer to as a writer's journal, is where ideas are born. The author shows you how to capture those ideas, fertilize them, and grow them into real live pieces worth publishing. An excellent book that includes excerpts from several writer's journals, including the author's.