Writing and the Spiritual Life:
Finding Your Voice by Looking Within
(McGraw-Hill/2001) ISBN 0-8092-2497-6

Inside everyone there are stories. By tapping into your spiritual self you'll find your true voice—the voice that allows your deep self to speak. Patrice Vecchione guides readers on an inner exploration. She presents writing as a spiritual practice and connects readers to their inborn creativity. Vecchione reflects on the presence of the spiritual in our everyday lives and presents clear, easy-to-follow processes and writing exercises to help readers discover confidence in their own voice. Writing and the Spiritual Life shows readers:

• How to find depth in your writing
• How to develop trust and faith in your story
• Where to find sources of spirit and creativity
• How to quiet the mind of doubt and criticism
• How to capture that which is sacred and pull it into your writing

REVIEWS

“This book will show you the way. Trust the voice of Patrice Vecchione.”
—The Writer Magazine

“Vecchione draws on a long history of devotional writing in a book that is refreshingly simple and thought-provoking.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“She dares to take on the frustration, the fear—and the myth—of writer’s block....She explains how the hurdles that can hinder our writing can be easier to get over than one might think.”
— Santa Cruz Sentinel

HOW TO ORDER

Available at your local bookstore, through
bookshopsantacruz.com or amazon.com

READ AN EXCERPT

When I was a child my father occasionally spoke to me about light, particularly how the color of the buildings in certain neighborhoods in lower Manhattan were affected by late afternoon light. We’d be walking together, and he’d stop me with a hand on my shoulder and say, “Look,” as he stared down the street. There was no parade going by, no movie star getting out of a limo; it was the light he was referring to, how it changed what he saw and gave everything a glow and warmed the colors. He had a tone of voice that was reserved for those observations alone. I wouldn’t have noticed that last bit of musty brightness before the dark comes. I must have been no more than four years old the first time my father pointed out the light.... He was drawing me to notice more than the actual light, to find a quality of attention that came form deep inside, that was about a sorrow of sorts. The ending of day reminded him of other endings, I think, and how fleeting intense moments were, the importance of recognizing the beauty in something before it fled. I knew it was about the outside coming in, and I felt he was opening a door for me into a place where we both lived.... What I heard was: this matters—pay attention to the details of the world and yourself.