Because You Have To: A Writing Life
About this ebook
Frank offers what she has learned as a writer not only to other writers, but to those to whom good writing matters. Her insights about "thinking on paper" are never dogmatic or pontifical; rather, they are cordial and intellectually welcoming.
Original, witty, and practical, Frank ably steers us through the journey of her own life as a writer, as well as through the careers and work of other writers. Her subjects range widely, from the “boot camp” conditioning of marketing work to squaring off with rejection and envy; from sustaining belief in art’s necessity to the baffling subjectivity of literary perception and the magical books that nourish writers. Frank’s personal journey is wonderfully told, so that what in these essays is particular becomes useful and universal.
About the author
Joan Frank is the author of two story collections—In Envy Country (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize and the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award, and Boys Keep Being Born—and three novels: Make It Stay, The Great Far Away, and Miss Kansas City, which won the Michigan Literary Fiction Award. She lives in northern California.
