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Crash Course: Essays From Where Writing and Life Collide
Robin Black's path through loss and survival delivered her to the writer's life. Agoraphobia, the challenges of parenting a child with special needs, and the legacy of a formidable father all shaped that journey. In these deeply personal and instructive essays, the author of the internationally acclaimed If I loved you, I would tell you this and Life Drawing explores the making of art through the experiences of building a life. Engaging, challenging, and moving, Crash Course is full of insight into how to write—and why.
From "Autumn, 1972, A Moment at Which I Became a Writer":
I sense, even now, the reverberations of a kind of shattering of my foundation and a quick rebuild, a change at a molecular level of who I understood myself to be. No longer someone who could look at another person without wondering what their life was like, but someone with a new curiosity about what people's stories might actually be.
Robin Black is the author of the story collection, If I loved you, I would tell you this and the novel Life Drawing, both critically acclaimed, and both published in multiple languages. She has developed a loyal, enthusiastic following for her essays on life and writing, online and in such publications as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and O Magazine. She lives with her husband in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the house is always open for their three grown children.
From "Autumn, 1972, A Moment at Which I Became a Writer":
I sense, even now, the reverberations of a kind of shattering of my foundation and a quick rebuild, a change at a molecular level of who I understood myself to be. No longer someone who could look at another person without wondering what their life was like, but someone with a new curiosity about what people's stories might actually be.
Robin Black is the author of the story collection, If I loved you, I would tell you this and the novel Life Drawing, both critically acclaimed, and both published in multiple languages. She has developed a loyal, enthusiastic following for her essays on life and writing, online and in such publications as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and O Magazine. She lives with her husband in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the house is always open for their three grown children.
200 pages, Paperback
First published April 12, 2016
12 people are currently reading
407 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
April 3, 2022
There is not a book- topic-or sentence that bores me from Robin Black.
Her writing is refreshing, direct, honest, insightful, and emotionally intimate.
Robin shares the ‘nitty gritty’s’
about a writer’s life’ …
[practical suggestions, challenges writers face, editing tips, references and research work, publishing, etc]…
She includes deeply felt personal stories about herself, her family, marriage, parenting, the complicated love she had with her father, and the many shades of color that life is.
It’s Robin’s inner voice matched with her exceptional skill to transfer words that are experientially relatable that impress me so much.
……”Crash Course” is as enjoyable and engaging as a great conversation is with a friend!!!!!
Her writing is refreshing, direct, honest, insightful, and emotionally intimate.
Robin shares the ‘nitty gritty’s’
about a writer’s life’ …
[practical suggestions, challenges writers face, editing tips, references and research work, publishing, etc]…
She includes deeply felt personal stories about herself, her family, marriage, parenting, the complicated love she had with her father, and the many shades of color that life is.
It’s Robin’s inner voice matched with her exceptional skill to transfer words that are experientially relatable that impress me so much.
……”Crash Course” is as enjoyable and engaging as a great conversation is with a friend!!!!!
March 29, 2019
Crash Course is one of the most brutally honest books about writing, and not writing, that I've ever read. Robin Black (author of If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This and Life Drawing) doesn't always come off very well here; I appreciated her bravery in writing about her own shortcomings, and this sort of honesty almost always leads to the most helpful and encouraging advice. Black's fiction tends to be dead serious, so I'm happy to report Crash Course contains a lot of humor. I subtracted a star because I got tired of her whining about negative online reader reviews (get over it, authors! or better yet, just don't read them), but on the whole I thought this was fantastic. Recommended for aspiring writers.
April 28, 2016
Oh my goodness. This book. Every writer, would-be-writer, aspiring writer, closet-writer, bestselling and debut writer *needs* this book. Trust me. It's like Robin Black crawled inside my head and accessed every single thought I've had about motherhood, the writing life, and the life in writing. It makes me want to be a better writer. And that, right there, is hugely powerful.
CRASH COURSE is an insightful, beautiful, and searingly honest account of the writing life told with wisdom, humor, and self-awareness you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. It's fantastic. I laughed, nodded in agreement, gasped, and maybe, quite possibly could have shed a tear or two.
Black *gets* it. She lives it and then she lives it some more.
Do yourself a favor, get this book. Now.
For all of my reviews, including author interviews, please see: www.leslielindsay.com
CRASH COURSE is an insightful, beautiful, and searingly honest account of the writing life told with wisdom, humor, and self-awareness you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. It's fantastic. I laughed, nodded in agreement, gasped, and maybe, quite possibly could have shed a tear or two.
Black *gets* it. She lives it and then she lives it some more.
Do yourself a favor, get this book. Now.
For all of my reviews, including author interviews, please see: www.leslielindsay.com
February 8, 2019
I felt sad when I realized I was nearing the end of these lovely essays. For the time I spent reading them, I was in the company of someone warm, intelligent, understanding, funny. Someone I felt was a friend, even though we'd never met and were unlikely ever to do so.
Robin Black stalled in her writing career for 20 years. She raised a family, including a daughter with special needs and she shares some of the challenges and joys of her life then. She has ADD and she also shares some of the challenges she faces. She talks about the gift of finally writing, of overcoming whatever (and she has some clear ideas) stopped her from doing so for all those years.
She also writes of the pain she was in all those years as an artist who was not creating, a writer who didn't write and of the ways it poisoned a life that in many ways she loved. She loved being a stay-at-home mother and her second husband. But the not-writing poisoned the well-spring of her life and so while she celebrates her second act, she honors the pain of all those other years.
Many of these essays also address the writing life, the process of writing and what it means (to her) to be a writer. I found her writing about writing to be particularly interesting. She's a teacher of writing as well as a writer and my sense from these essays is she's a teacher with whom I'd love to study.
I did find her just a little privileged: part of me felt that her pain was that of someone who had been given many material as well as emotional gifts and although her struggle was real and difficult, I envied her the ability to take the time (and money?) to get her MFA at Warren Wilson and devote herself to writing without also juggling another job as well as her family. But as I said this quibble comes out of my own envy. She has had her pains and problems--as have we all.
However, apart from that relatively small resentment, I loved being in her writer's presence. The personal she has on the page is compassionate, intelligent, interested in the world. I immediately bought her novel, Life Drawing. If it's half as well-written and interesting as these essays, it should be a rewarding experience to read.
Robin Black stalled in her writing career for 20 years. She raised a family, including a daughter with special needs and she shares some of the challenges and joys of her life then. She has ADD and she also shares some of the challenges she faces. She talks about the gift of finally writing, of overcoming whatever (and she has some clear ideas) stopped her from doing so for all those years.
She also writes of the pain she was in all those years as an artist who was not creating, a writer who didn't write and of the ways it poisoned a life that in many ways she loved. She loved being a stay-at-home mother and her second husband. But the not-writing poisoned the well-spring of her life and so while she celebrates her second act, she honors the pain of all those other years.
Many of these essays also address the writing life, the process of writing and what it means (to her) to be a writer. I found her writing about writing to be particularly interesting. She's a teacher of writing as well as a writer and my sense from these essays is she's a teacher with whom I'd love to study.
I did find her just a little privileged: part of me felt that her pain was that of someone who had been given many material as well as emotional gifts and although her struggle was real and difficult, I envied her the ability to take the time (and money?) to get her MFA at Warren Wilson and devote herself to writing without also juggling another job as well as her family. But as I said this quibble comes out of my own envy. She has had her pains and problems--as have we all.
However, apart from that relatively small resentment, I loved being in her writer's presence. The personal she has on the page is compassionate, intelligent, interested in the world. I immediately bought her novel, Life Drawing. If it's half as well-written and interesting as these essays, it should be a rewarding experience to read.
July 14, 2016
Robin Black wrote a beautiful novel called Life Drawing which I highly recommend to anyone. This book of essays is an interesting companion piece to that - the background on how it got written, the aftermath of having written it, and her observations on life and writing in general. For both writers and those interested in writers, I highly recommend it.
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November 23, 2017Enjoyed this book. Robin Black read some of her fiction at my MFA program at Ashland this summer, and then I found her writing memoir. She touches on many topics in a series of short essays, several of which I bookmarked to read to my classes. She's engaging; it's a quick read because of short sections on many topics, and I loved her defense of adverbs!
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November 21, 2017I wasn’t more than two pages into Crash Course when I pulled out a pen and started underlining like crazy. In these essays, Robin Black is simultaneously a wise teacher, an encouraging mentor, and that friend who gives you the real dirt on what the writing life is like. Crash Course is an invaluable resource and reassurance for any writer.
March 16, 2016
Lucky me: I landed an advance copy of Robin Black's CRASH COURSE: Essays from Where Writing and Life Collide. From the pov of both delighted reader and instructor who helps students polish their essays, this book is a valuable tool. Black writes with honesty matched by good humor. Consider "I've just started to realize how bloody difficult it is, even when you like a book a lot, to find things to say that don't sound like you bought them at the blurb store." and "I am empty now.... Some might call this writers block, but I have always disliked that term--and not only because I don't know where to put the apostrophe." I would love to take classes with Black, who teaches in an MFA program. This book is the next best thing.
Read
April 14, 2016I love Robin Black's essays on writing, and was really excited when I found out this collection was forthcoming. It didn't disappoint.
To my mind, calling Crash Course a "motherhood and writing book" is inaccurate. As a whole, the essays continually push back and forth across the "ought to" and "have to" territories in a writer's life -- something that many writers contend with on a nearly minute-by-minute basis, but don't talk about -- or think about -- beyond self-chastising. Black doesn't so much offer solutions as she says well, here's what's happened. As someone who is weary of writing advice books but still needs that sort of outside influence sometimes? I *really* appreciate that approach.
To my mind, calling Crash Course a "motherhood and writing book" is inaccurate. As a whole, the essays continually push back and forth across the "ought to" and "have to" territories in a writer's life -- something that many writers contend with on a nearly minute-by-minute basis, but don't talk about -- or think about -- beyond self-chastising. Black doesn't so much offer solutions as she says well, here's what's happened. As someone who is weary of writing advice books but still needs that sort of outside influence sometimes? I *really* appreciate that approach.
September 4, 2020
Robin Black chose my essay in a contest, so I wanted to read some of her work. I chose this book hoping it would offer a glimpse into who she is, how she works and what her writing is like. I found a collection of essays about writing that are very easy to relate to, whether you write fiction or nonfiction. They are easy to read during your daughter's swim practices, for example, with lots of great advice to underline regarding criticism, rejection, revision, jealousy and more. An added bonus: There's a section near the end where Robin describes her thought process for choosing contest finalists.
I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading others.
I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading others.
February 21, 2016
I loved Robin Black's novel Life Drawing, and reading this book of short essays was like having an intimate conversation about the writing life with a writer I greatly admire. While these essays contain a lot of writing advice, this is less a "how to" writing manual than a personal exploration of Black's growth and development as a writer, struggling also at times to balance personal and family challenges with her career. These essays are honest and sometimes raw, infused with wisdom and often humor. Recommended, especially for writers and those interested in the writing life.
May 29, 2016
A must-read for everyone who has been published and especially for those who hope to make a career and living from writing books, Black shares what it's like to be a professional author with all a writer's idiosyncrasies and paranoias magnified. She tempers it with sane perspective, priceless wisdom for maintaining at least partial sanity. One of my favorite takeaways was from a chapter on rejection: do whatever you have to do, avoid whatever you need to avoid...write, send the work out, write more...
May 30, 2016
This is a gem of a book. Black's writing is absolutely pitch perfect, so incredibly readable and enjoyable. She uses stories from her own life to elucidate the writing process with all its pitfalls and joys. It's a very personal book while simultaneously a universal guide to anyone serious about writing.
I loved it. Pass it on.
I loved it. Pass it on.
April 8, 2016
Robin Black is an inspiration. This poignant and evocative collection of essays on writing and motherhood is a book to pick up when you need a guide through the muddles of writing and/or life.
April 24, 2016
You're a writer? You want to be a writer? You want to know what the writing life is all about? Get this book. Read it. Period. You must.
In Crash Course: Essays From Where Writing and Life Collide, author Robin Black delivers unvarnished truth about what it's like to make one's way in the writing world. She'll let you know there is jealousy and paralyzing fear of failure and waiting for a beloved relative to die before you can write a single word. There's ADD and a messy house and children in need of tending and Virginia Woolf showing up in your dreams.
She'll tell you what's the deal with entering contests and line editing and that thing that's always bugged you--are adverbs really all that bad? And guess what? You might have to write a query letter that makes you sound like a stalker before you get a literary agent. Black knows. She's been there.
In fact the subtitle of the book is scarily accurate. Black takes you right to the spot of the collision and with the clear-eyed vision of one who endured the crash and lived to tell the tale, she generously shares the hard-earned wisdom of her experience. And I do mean hard-earned. If you're looking for simple answers and easy fixes you'll be disappointed. Black makes it plain--there's no shortcut for doing the work, both on and off the page. There's always the terrible chance the work won't pay off but she offers enough encouragement and inspiration that you'll come away from the book sure of this: if you want to be a writer, you'll do the work anyway and in your heart of hearts, even if that heart gets broken a time or two, you'll know it will be worth it.
In Crash Course: Essays From Where Writing and Life Collide, author Robin Black delivers unvarnished truth about what it's like to make one's way in the writing world. She'll let you know there is jealousy and paralyzing fear of failure and waiting for a beloved relative to die before you can write a single word. There's ADD and a messy house and children in need of tending and Virginia Woolf showing up in your dreams.
She'll tell you what's the deal with entering contests and line editing and that thing that's always bugged you--are adverbs really all that bad? And guess what? You might have to write a query letter that makes you sound like a stalker before you get a literary agent. Black knows. She's been there.
In fact the subtitle of the book is scarily accurate. Black takes you right to the spot of the collision and with the clear-eyed vision of one who endured the crash and lived to tell the tale, she generously shares the hard-earned wisdom of her experience. And I do mean hard-earned. If you're looking for simple answers and easy fixes you'll be disappointed. Black makes it plain--there's no shortcut for doing the work, both on and off the page. There's always the terrible chance the work won't pay off but she offers enough encouragement and inspiration that you'll come away from the book sure of this: if you want to be a writer, you'll do the work anyway and in your heart of hearts, even if that heart gets broken a time or two, you'll know it will be worth it.
March 30, 2021
She writes about herself in a memoir. This is something new for me. I am learning to listen to a personal memoir for the first time. I may try one myself someday. Black has a self-depreciating sense of humor which is entertaining and engaging. When she whines about something, she is damn funny. Don't we all whine at times even if it is in secret!
I want to learn how to write an honest but humorous memoir. So far, she is doing well.
She got a bit too unrelatable for me later on... but I might go back to this...later... sorry...
OK, now this is the third time I have posted this latest review. Hope it sticks this time...lol. I have read her chapter on "The Dark Ages" and I connected with it very well. She finally goes to school, in an MFA program and begins to write. I am about to do the same thing only I am 35 years older than she is. Big stretch... lol. Therefore, I connected with her however late and appreciated her persistence and her fortitude. I hope to finish my memoir before I finish myself here on this planet. :-)
I want to learn how to write an honest but humorous memoir. So far, she is doing well.
She got a bit too unrelatable for me later on... but I might go back to this...later... sorry...
OK, now this is the third time I have posted this latest review. Hope it sticks this time...lol. I have read her chapter on "The Dark Ages" and I connected with it very well. She finally goes to school, in an MFA program and begins to write. I am about to do the same thing only I am 35 years older than she is. Big stretch... lol. Therefore, I connected with her however late and appreciated her persistence and her fortitude. I hope to finish my memoir before I finish myself here on this planet. :-)
April 11, 2016
I've read a number of writing and craft books, and usually finish them having found one or two good ideas, but never feeling exactly helped; Robin Black's essays, in great contrast, are wildly, exorbitantly helpful. More than any philosophy of writing, her sharp-eyed and honest insights into the frustrating experience of creating art--of wanting badly to put together something beautiful and the complex crazy that entails--are inspiring, moving, and deeply useful. There is no lack of craft chapters on POV; but I have never seen anyone talk so candidly and well about how to survive, how to persist within, the desire to write. Funny, wise, and lucid, Black's essays are a great pleasure and help.
June 27, 2016
Crash Course isn’t a book of advice, so much as it is the author saying, “Here’s what worked for me, and here’s where I made mistakes.” As someone who published her first book in midlife and didn’t write for twenty years during what she calls the “Dark Ages,” perhaps the biggest lesson Black offers is to get past the fear of beginning to write, because “losing decades of your life to such fears leaves a very deep scar.”
Because this book travels from a period of not writing all the way through to publishing, I could see this book being recommended to students just beginning to write as well as those who have practiced the craft for some time.
See my full review at JMWW Journal: https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2016/0...
Because this book travels from a period of not writing all the way through to publishing, I could see this book being recommended to students just beginning to write as well as those who have practiced the craft for some time.
See my full review at JMWW Journal: https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2016/0...
May 13, 2016
I read Robin Black's book in 3 days, not because it's a "simple" read. I have marked pages with ink and pencil. I've folded multiple pages. She's not only a compelling essayist but also an outstanding teacher of writing itself. Her essay, "A Life of Profound Uncertainty" will make its way to my family and non-writer friends within a week. In it, she somehow finds a way to explain how once we choose to be writers, we are full of "don't knows" that people in other lines of work never face. She made sense of something I've tried to explain for years! And, her essay about adverbs has won a place in my heart next to Stephen King's ideas (different, but also useful) in his book, ON WRITING.
April 9, 2016
This is a book that I appreciated as a reader, loved as a writer, and will use as a writing teacher. Robin Black weaves personal and craft issues in a manner that braid them so perfectly the craft lessons become all the more useful. I highly recommend this book--and you don't need to be a writer to be fascinated.
April 10, 2016
CRASH COURSE is the book that should be in the hands of every writer, aspiring or established. It is packed with such wisdom, humor and raw power, I know I will keep returning to it. Robin Black has had the courage to rip open her soul and reflect upon a life's experience, and the unflinching generosity to share it with us.
May 23, 2016
Loved this book. I was touched by Robin Black's honesty, her willingness to share painful experiences, her wisdom about life and about writing. One of my favorite lines: "Taking the time to work something through with someone who has hurt you, rather than just giving up, is itself a loving thing thing to do."
March 15, 2021
4.5
Read this book in one sitting and found it to be raw and full of energy. It was recommended reading in a writing class that I took and after reading the book I certainly felt very seen as a writer. It was a reassurance of how messy the process was. Still processing how important it is.
Read this book in one sitting and found it to be raw and full of energy. It was recommended reading in a writing class that I took and after reading the book I certainly felt very seen as a writer. It was a reassurance of how messy the process was. Still processing how important it is.
June 12, 2016
This collection of craft essay/memoir collage ranks with classics like Anne Lamont's Bird By Bird and Stephen King's On Writing. I've read several of the essays in their original publications and they are still resonate and wise on second reading.
May 2, 2016
Superb, interior view of the writing life.
This was not a conventional writing craft book, rather a deeply personal exploration of the path toward and through that life. So much of it resonated with me.
This was not a conventional writing craft book, rather a deeply personal exploration of the path toward and through that life. So much of it resonated with me.
September 3, 2016
This book was sitting on my Kindle way too long. I'm sorry I didn't manage to get to it sooner.
April 13, 2024
An outstanding collection of personal essays on, as the subtitle indicates, the place where writing and life collide.
January 14, 2017
Many great lines of advice, like "tough skin for career, tender skin for art."
Or the essay on adverbs made me rethink this much-maligned word.
Or the essay on adverbs made me rethink this much-maligned word.
May 23, 2017
Robin Black is the writer mentor and friend who gives you hope and kicks your butt into gear all in one go. Fabulous book, one to read often as a refresher.
December 14, 2017
This is a wonderfully written collection of thoughts on writing, and I had a lot to take away from it, judging by the number of dog-eared pages and underlines I’d made by the end.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews