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Book Cover for: This Creative Life: A Handbook for Writers, Sara Zarr

This Creative Life: A Handbook for Writers

Sara Zarr

There are a lot of books about writing out there. If you're like most writers, you've read them all. But learning how to write (and organize and outline and plot and edit and save the cat and market a breakout book) is one thing. Making and living a sustainable creative life in the face of...everything...is an entirely different matter. To know how to do that, we need to take a look at what goes on between the lines of our lives as writers so that we can live them with maybe a little more thought and intention--no matter the many interior and exterior obstacles that can threaten to derail our purpose.

In this companion book to her long-running podcast, Sara Zarr brings her sixteen-year publishing career and experience as a speaker, teacher, and mentor to a conversational and encouraging collection of hard-won insights about what it means not to just write (and perchance to publish), but to be a writer.

Book Details

  • Publisher: This Creative Life Books
  • Publish Date: May 5th, 2022
  • Pages: 168
  • Language: English
  • Edition: Print Is - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.00in - 0.39in - 0.41lb
  • EAN: 9780578324104
  • Categories: CreativityWriting - Business Aspects

About the Author

Zarr, Sara: - Sara Zarr is the critically acclaimed author of ten books and the host of the This Creative Life podcast. She's a National Book Award finalist and two-time Utah Book Award winner. Her books have been variously named to annual best books lists of the American Library Association, Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, School Library Journal, the Guardian, the International Reading Association, the New York Public Library and Los Angeles Public Library, and have been translated into many languages. She has served as a judge for the National Book Award. Her first book, Story of a Girl, was made into a 2017 television movie directed by Kyra Sedgwick.

Praise for this book

Praise for the This Creative Life podcast:


"Helpful and accessible! Highly recommend."


"Honest and inspiring."


"Supportive, entertaining, and educational."


"Warm, inspiring, and fun."


Praise for Sara Zarr's books


"Zarr has established herself as an author who must not be missed." - VOYA


"Zarr's writing is remarkable." - Booklist


"This is realistic fiction at its best." - School Library Journal


"Courageous Creativity not only unlocks pathways within and around us; it grants permission to fearlessly imagine, try, fail, and re-imagine whatever we approach in everyday life. Invaluable!" - Rita Williams-Garcia, three-time Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner; Newbery Honor Winner


"Zarr's greatest gift is that she can break your heart with the smallest of details, and patch it back up with her immense empathy." Aaron Starmer, author of Spontaneous