Write Your Heart Out: Exploring & Expressing What Matters to You

Write Your Heart Out explores how to turn personal experiences, ideas and emotions into stories, essays, poems and memoirs. In a clear, insightful voice, Rebecca McClanahan teaches readers how to mine and shape personal material, urging them to write deeply, honestly and imaginatively about the most important people, events and emotions in their lives. She emphasizes the importance of personal writing as both catharsis and discovery, addressing such topics as:

* Writing about the past
* Writing about, and from, strong emotions
* Writing to communicate with family and friends
* Writing about work, goals and interests

Moving from the private to the public, the book's structure is formulated to guide readers in writing personal, heartfelt works that can, if so desired, culminate in publication.

Rebecca McClanahan's tenth book, The Tribal Knot, a multi-generational memoir, is forthcoming from Indiana University Press in 2013. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, and numerous anthologies. The recipient of the Wood Prize from Poetry, a Pushcart Prize in fiction, the Glasgow Award for nonfiction, and literary fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, McClanahan teaches in the MFA programs of Queens University and Rainier Writers Workshop.