Cultivating the Life Skill of Writing

Scott Crider and Sarah Barnette

The mere act of writing for one’s self tends to reveal the fact that each one of us contains multitudes. When we write in our diaries or journals, we employ rhetorical devices even though our audience is within us. Scott Crider and Sarah Barnette—both are teachers and scholars committed to the craft of writing—discuss how conversing with one’s self through writing treats the self like the other in a useful way, giving us liberal room to persuade or represent ourselves. The end result, hopefully, is that one is transformed through the openness of the experience, having escaped from conflict or confusion into clarity. Crider and Barnette also speak about practical matters: how to start the practice of writing, how to make use of originality, and how to lean on the good writing of others.