Because You Have To

Part memoir part handbook part survey of the contemporary literary scene Joan Frank's <i>Because You Have To: A Writing Life</i> is a collection of essays that taken together provide a walking tour of the writing life. Frank's aim is to form a coherent vision one that may provide some communion about realities of the writer's vocation that have struck her as rarely revealed. Frank offers what she has learned as a writer not only to other writers but to those to whom good writing matters. Her insights about thinking on paper are never dogmatic or pontifical; rather they are cordial and intellectually welcoming. Original witty and practical Frank ably steers us through the journey of her own life as a writer as well as through the careers and work of other writers. Her subjects range widely from the boot camp conditioning of marketing work to squaring off with rejection and envy; from sustaining belief in art's necessity to the baffling subjectivity of literary perception and the magical books that nourish writers. Frank's personal journey is wonderfully told so that what in these essays is particular becomes useful and universal.