Writing as a Way of Life: A Book About Art, Craft, and Devotion

Writing as a Way of Life is an incredibly generous book and reflects everything Brian Morton is like as a teacher. He trusts the writer in front of him to take what they need and leave what they don’t, while providing encouragement and common-sense advice, as well as permission to play around, fail often, and keep going anyway.
—Ilana Masad, author of Beings and All My Mother’s Lovers

Of all the writers I have known, Brian Morton is the most generous, the most dedicated, and the most thoughtful. In Writing as a Way of Life, a distillation of five decades of reading and thinking about writing, he asks the most profound questions: Is it possible to write and to live? To be a writer and a decent human being? Does it matter if you know where to place an apostrophe? This is a book both practical and inspiring; both deeply ethical and very funny. It takes wisdom from Tolstoy, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, but also Major League Baseball. This is a book to be read, and re-read, and cherished.
—Keith Gessen, author of A Terrible Country and All the Sad Young Literary Men

Intimate, practical, and above all generous, Writing as a Way of Life belongs on the shortlist of great books about art-making—not as a problem to be solved, but as a reality to be lived. This isn’t to say that the ‘craft’ of writing gets overlooked: Morton’s discussion of plot alone is worth the price of admission. But rarely has a writer spoken with such focus on, and endearing frankness about, ‘the psychic equipment you’ll need to keep going.’ Long one of our most distinguished novelists, readers, and teachers, Brian Morton provides an indispensable guide for those embarking on the writing life.
—Garth Risk Hallberg, New York Times best-selling author of City on Fire and The Second Coming

Brian Morton’s writing advice is brilliant, funny, bold, and eminently quotable. With his signature humor and wide-ranging intelligence, he sweeps us along into the heart of the writing life.
—Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink

Brian Morton was my fiction seminar professor. He is every bit as generous and nurturing in Writing as a Way of Life as he was to us in grad school. This book will help your craft and it will also help your soul.
¬—Sidik Fofana, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs