Breathing In, Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook

Keeping a notebook may be the single best way to survive as a writer. It encourages a greater sensitivity to your world, inside and out. It serves as a haven for new ideas until they are strong and mature enough to face the harsh light of rational judgment. It gives you a quiet place to catch your breath and begin writing.

Breathing In, Breathing Out is a book for the writer in each one of us, however lost, however buried. Ralph Fletcher takes a probing look into the nature of a writer's notebook, examining what it is, how writers use it, and what makes it tick. You will discover why writers like Naomi Shihab Nye and Dorothy Allison consider their notebooks so important to the work they create. You will also read snippets from Fletcher's notebook, where he reveals the "displayed self" of a writer whose innermost workings he knows best.

To Fletcher, keeping a writer's notebook is as natural an activity as breathing so he has organized his book in a way that illuminates two basic aspects of the process. Breathing In refers to the way the notebook can serve as a receptacle for selected insights, lines, images, dreams, and fragments of conversations. In this way it helps you pay closer attention to your world. Breathing Out is intended to suggest the notebook as an ideal place to use what you have collected and spark your own original writing.

This book is for new writers as well as those who may have once loved to write but have lost the spark along the way. It will help you find a natural rhythm for using a notebook and in the process start living the life of a writer.

Ralph Fletcher has been a mentor to teachers and young writers everywhere. He has helped hundreds of thousands of teachers understand the importance of letting go and trusting their writers. Ralph's professional books are part of this tradition.

His newest book, Focus Lessons, helps teachers use the natural links between writing and photography to enhance their instruction. Another recent title, Joy Write, explores the value of giving students time and autonomy for the playful, low-stakes writing that leads to surprising, high-level growth.

Ralph frequently works with young writers in schools, and speaks at education conferences in the U.S. and abroad, helping teachers find wiser ways of teaching writing. Ralph is the beloved author of many bestselling teacher professional books and resources including:

• Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide 
• What a Writer Needs, Second Edition
• Mentor Author, Mentor Texts
• Craft Lessons
• Breathing In, Breathing Out
• Teaching the Qualities of Writing
• Lessons for the Writer's Notebook

Students know Ralph as the award-winning author of more than 20 books for children and young adults, including Fig Pudding, Twilight Comes Twice, The Writer’s Notebook, Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid, and most recently Marshfield Memories: More Stories About Growing Up.

Ralph Fletcher online

» Listen to a recent Heinemann podcast where Ralph talks about Joy Write (17:31).

» Read Ralph's latest thoughts at his blog: Living the Writing Life.

» Listen to an interview with Ralph on Education Talk Radio (38:29).

» Follow Ralph on Twitter @FletcherRalph.