BOOK REVIEW: The Writer Behind the Words by Dara Girard

The Writer Behind the Words
By Dara Girard
Ilori Press
September 30, 2007
131 pp Paperback
Writing/Education
ISBN: 0977019152
Amazon Price: $10.46


There are shelves of good books about how to become a better writer; this book isn’t one of them. Disappointed and discouraged? Good—In that case, The Writer Behind the Words by Dara Girard can be just the book you are looking for.

Girard won’t tell you how to write a perfect query letter or which editors to query, but she will tell you how to identify the obstacles in your writing career and suggest ways to overcome them.

Drawing on her personal experience, disappointments, discouragements, and doubts in her writing career, Gerard has written an honest, straightforward, humorous book to help beginning writers survive the downfalls of the publishing world.

Don’t look for sugarcoated words with all the keys to success and all the right answers to all your writing needs. Girard didn’t sugarcoat anything. In fact, her book is loaded with scenarios gone wrong that could give you reason to put your pen down and quit writing. But following those downward spirals are plenty of suggestions and encouragement to keep writing and working on your craft.

Truth is, Girard hits on many of the pitfalls of a writing career. She tells you how to spot bad editors and agents and tells writers they can be their own dream killers by making excuses for not writing. There are even tips on how to tackle your own excuses.

The Writer Behind the Words is divided into three parts.

Part One: Assessing Yourself explains how beginning writers are looking for the secrets and steps to publication. Rather than tell you what success is, Girard tells you to “define success for yourself” and explains the differences between goals and missions. She reveals the reality of the six hard truths of publishing and the seven traits of successful writers.

Part Two: Surviving the Battlefield is a step-by-step instruction on how to overcome disappointment, discouragement, doubt and depression. Girard explains how rejections influence your writing career and offers tips on how to recover from rejection and move forward.

This reviewer even found humor in Girard’s thoughts about book reviewers:

Somebody with the intelligence of a pimple, somewhere is going to criticize your work; not constructively, mind you, but with the sole intent of demolishing your work and making themselves feel witty. …They are writers with hidden agendas. Some are kind; some are cruel. But they don’t count; readers do. (51-52)

While in some cases reviewers are as described; some are not, and they do count because they are readers. Girard offered humorous tips on what to do with a bad review as well. She suggests to “flush it down the toilet” or “get your dog to pee on it” or “find out what the reviewer disliked and then do that some more—That is what will make your work unique. (53)

Part Three: Four Steps to Resilience is where Girard tells beginning writers to get support, relax, know your limitations, and get a strategy.

She ends the books with seven pages of recommended resources and writer’s organizations.

In The Writer Behind the Words Girard put her heart, soul, and her disappointments and discouragements into words that could help beginning writers see the disappointments they may face before they find out the hard way as Girard did.

In the preface to her book Girard writes:

I wrote this book as a gift to other writers who are discouraged, feel hopeless or useless in a world that can make us—the artist—feel insignificant and invisible. …Isolation is deadly to the spirit, yet, as a writer, a necessary requirement at times. So let this little book be a friend that whispers to you: “You are important and your words are needed.”

This reviewer would recommend The Writer Behind the Words to beginning writers. They could benefit from Girard’s experience and find the encouragement and tips they need to overcome the pitfalls in their own writing career.

Click HERE to purchase The Writer Behind the Words.

Writing Strengths Meme

While catching up on my reading today, I ran across this exercise for writers at Sury’s At Home, Writing blog. I’ve written a number of memes where I was to list books or movies I enjoyed or list 10 things about myself that no one knows. They were fun, but when I saw this ‘Writing Strengths’ meme it caught my eye. Lately, I haven’t been writing much (at least not the type writing I want to write) so this may take me a while to come up with five strengths.

The guideline for the meme is as follows: Make a list of five strengths that you possess as a writer/artist. It’s not really bragging, it’s an honest assessment (forced upon you by this darn meme). Please resist the urge to enumerate your weaknesses, or even mention them in contrast to each strong point you list. Tag four other writers or artists whom you’d like to see share their strengths.
After much thought, this is what I came up with.

1) Truth: No matter what I write (essays, articles, short stories, or novels) my writing is filled with truth in one aspect or another. Essays of course are a brief expression of one’s past: an experience, or a thought of how that experience felt. Each and every essay I’ve ever written reflects a different part of my life, or someone else’s life. I suppose the expression; “the truth will set you free” might be how I look at my writing. Truth in words is important to me. When writing, I am free to voice whatever comes to mind and allow all my feelings to come out. That brings me to my next strength.

2) Feeling: Finding the proper words to express an emotion, scene, or thought is rewarding. Capturing a reader within your words in order to stimulate him or her to perceive those feelings is an honor. Nothing pleases me more than when I receive notes, e-mails, and personal messages from people who read my work. The number one feedback I hear is: “your writing placed me right there beside you.” There’s no better compliment than that!

3) Affect: In the terms of my writing having an effect upon someone. When my words induce an emotional or cognitive impact upon a person, then I’ve done my job well. That is what writing is all about; to leave an impact in some way, even if just for the moment. Thank you to all who have told me my writing affected you in some way.

4) Courage/Voice: I’d like to think that through writing I’ve shown the courage I’ve gained from this profession. I’m speaking not only of the courage in the sense of having the ability to write the truth, show my feelings, and affect those who read my work. But I’m also speaking of the courage in the sense that I may have voiced what so many others wished they could, but were afraid. Writing has given me the courage and the voice to express those things that often get swept under the rug and hidden.

5) Perseverance: No matter what life brings, or what joys, trials, or tribulations come my way, I have always persevered through my writing. Each of those joys and tribulations became a porthole of opportunity. It is because of all those experiences my writing has progressed through the years. Rejections come from all corners of life. Taking those rejections and turning them into joy takes a lot of hard work and perseverance. In a writer’s life, rejection is nothing new. If we learn from those rejections and push forward to make our writing speak out to the next editor or publisher, we have persevered.

May you all find truth, feeling, courage and voice as you write, and affect all your readers as you persevere in this wonderful world of words.

Oh yes, I tag: Ray, Nita, Unique, and Anne.