Writing Creativity and Soul

De: Sue Monk Kidd

Narrado por: Jane Oppenheimer, Ann Kidd Taylor

From the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longings: an intimate work on the mysteries, frustrations, and triumphs of being a writer, and an instructive guide to awakening the soul.

When Sue Monk Kidd was in high school, a home economics teacher wrote a list of potential occupations for women on the blackboard: teacher, nurse, librarian, secretary. “Writer” was nowhere to be found. On that day, Kidd shut the door on her writerly aspirations and would not revisit the topic until many years later when she announced to her husband and two children that she was going to become a writer. And so began her journey into the mysteries and methods of the writerly life....

In Writing Creativity and Soul, Sue Monk Kidd will pull from her own life and the lives of other writers—Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Harper Lee, and many others—to provide a map for anyone who has ever felt lost as a writer. At the heart of this book is the unwavering belief that writing is a spiritual act, one that draws inspiration from the soul, that wellspring of creativity between imagination and feeling. Once you tap into that part of yourself, said Maya Angelou, there are only three more things you need as a writer: something to say, the ability to say it, and, perhaps most difficult of all, the courage to say it.

Equal parts memoir, guidebook, and spiritual quest, Writing Creativity and Soul is a pilgrimage and a touchstone, a journey into the transformational force of the imagination and the creative genius that lies in the unconscious.

©2025 Sue Monk Kidd (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Kidd returns with a soul-searching meditation on her journey as a writer and her approach to storytelling. . . . A lyrical read and a generous companion for writers, especially those seeking depth in the process.” —Booklist

“Kidd is one of America’s most evocative memoirists of the spirit. Her new book looks back over a life of writing to explore the nature of human creativity and the urge we have not just to do something but to make something. Kidd digs deep into the archetypes of consciousness. . . . Memory becomes a box of precious finds. Kidd can write some of the lushest clauses in American prose. She can also write a simple declarative sentence. At such points of contact, writing thrills. But it can also heal the fractures in our lives. A gorgeous memoir of the creative life, designed to bring out the writer’s voice in all of us.” —Kirkus (starred review)

She made me want to write again

I gave up on writing a decade ago. My ego suggested I had nothing to say and I had no counter argument.

Writing, Creativity and Soul appealed to my inner five year old. The child who once proclaimed, “I want to write an award-winning book when I am old and wise.”

That child rammed my heart like a Mattel jack-in-the-box, her orange perm, earnest hazel eyes, and skinny, freckled arms demanding recompense. “Your hair is white! Write!”

Sue Monk Kidd inspired me to reorganize time and space behind my desk wall of heart rocks.