Powerful Books About Writing, By Women Writers

The first book I ever read on women and writing was Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.  I remember being very excited (this was back in the late 1950's) that someone had put into words the difficulties facing women who wanted to become writers.

My strong sense of constraint certainly came from the beliefs I was raised with about women.  The amazing thing to me was that Woolf had  published her book in 1929 and the ideas and feelings in it were still true for me.

The even more amazing thing is that, although women are major writers now, so very many of us still struggle with feelings of guilt over making time for our own work a priority. 

I see this particularly with academic women who run themselves ragged as they drive kids to activities, tend to students, and take care of their families while trying to put time aside to work on their own writing for professional and personal purposes.

Two other books that still resonate a great deal for me, also written in an earlier time, are Joanna Field's A Life of One's Own, and Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer.

Field's book, clearly modeled after Woolf's,was published in 1936.  She described it as an experiment to find out "what kinds of experience made me happy."  Her book is still full of wisdom for life and for writing. 

Brande's book, from 1934, is full of ideas about ways to create the mindset and practice that serious writing requires.

Then there is Tillie Olsen's Silences, a collection of brief thoughts about the conflicts women writers can feel between their roles as nurturers and as bringers-forth of more than babies.

As an Italian-American I'm particularly sensitive to the pressure of culture here.  I wrote an article years ago called "Women of Silence," for the National Association of Italian-American Women, where I tried to articulate the difficulty Latin women can have speaking out, based on my work as a counselor with many women from those cultures (and Asian cultures too).

I don't believe women are so different from men in what we write; but I suspect we have a different set of obstacles to contend with--another reason to create a special corner of our own.