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Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing
Twelve years in the making, Breathing the Reading the Act of Writing is a must-read for students of creative writing. This collection is comprised of two sets of twelve essays each. "Materials" reflects on the history and animate nature of the objects we use in the act of writing, from computers, to pens and pencils, right down to paper. Warland subverts our assumptions about these 'tools' by making the case that our materials are also our collaborators. 'Concepts' investigates, names, and addresses the powerful forces at work beneath the language of craft. Warland shows that what ultimately determines whether a piece of writing succeeds or flounders is a writer's ability to be humbled, overcome, or guided by these forces.
- GenresWritingNonfictionCanada
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 3, 2018
I thought that Stephen King's On Writing was the best piece of work I had read on the craft. I was wrong. Betsy Warland's Breathing the Page is a stunning piece and must-read on the topic of writing. She dives deep into unwrapping the necessities of creating a writing life, employing both poetry and prose to illustrate what is possible to achieve when we are committed to refining our skills as writers.
At times the book does feel somewhat choppy in its back/forth approach. However, I don't believe the overall quality of the piece was compromised or made any less relevant in it's message.
Warland's work offers me many take aways and my copy is marked throughout. I am deeply moved by the language she uses: the page holds all possibilities, one moment fire and the next moment water (pg. 10-11).
I would urge all writers to read this book.
At times the book does feel somewhat choppy in its back/forth approach. However, I don't believe the overall quality of the piece was compromised or made any less relevant in it's message.
Warland's work offers me many take aways and my copy is marked throughout. I am deeply moved by the language she uses: the page holds all possibilities, one moment fire and the next moment water (pg. 10-11).
I would urge all writers to read this book.
April 14, 2025
As an avid reader and writer I felt like I could’ve been the intended audience of this book — and if not intended audience, that I would at least understand it. Wow, I was wrong. Wayland is a longtime writing teacher — why is it so difficult to understand her point in this book?? I couldn’t get past the first few pages and a skim of the rest. It seemed convoluted and fragmentary. Not sure if she was aiming for academic, but I found it totally inaccessible.
February 20, 2011
I’ve read my share of how-to writing books over the years. After all, writing is a lifelong learning process, so when a colleague recommended this book, I had to pick it up. Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing is a collection of essays mixed with interview segments about the act of writing, being a writer, and the all important—but often overlooked—preparation for writing. With more than forty years of writing and publishing experience, author Betsy Warland discusses this topic with a depth I’ve rarely heard before.
Some of her topics might seem mundane, such as pencils, tables, and computers, but there are much more to these topics than meets the eye, and that’s really what the book is about. Digging deeper into the act of writing; thinking about what one is doing, and why; pondering what works and what doesn’t in your own work, and how problem areas might be solved.
This is one of those books that you’ll want to pick up repeatedly as you work on your prose and poetry. Warland clearly identifies common problems, such as what she calls billboarding: writing unnecessary and intrusive commentary, or scaffolding: the necessary writing during initial drafts to build narrative, but which writers often forget or refuse to remove during revision. A couple of essays were a little obscure, or perhaps too complex, for me to fully understand and digest on the first read. Still, I leaned so much that I highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about writing well.
Some of her topics might seem mundane, such as pencils, tables, and computers, but there are much more to these topics than meets the eye, and that’s really what the book is about. Digging deeper into the act of writing; thinking about what one is doing, and why; pondering what works and what doesn’t in your own work, and how problem areas might be solved.
This is one of those books that you’ll want to pick up repeatedly as you work on your prose and poetry. Warland clearly identifies common problems, such as what she calls billboarding: writing unnecessary and intrusive commentary, or scaffolding: the necessary writing during initial drafts to build narrative, but which writers often forget or refuse to remove during revision. A couple of essays were a little obscure, or perhaps too complex, for me to fully understand and digest on the first read. Still, I leaned so much that I highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about writing well.
August 4, 2011
The questions this author asks are wonderful ones that need answering. What's bogging down my narrative? How do I draw the reader in? What might be causing the unfolding narrative to be murky? Unfortunately, specific, practical answers are literally hard to find in her narrative. I did a quick outline of the book and came up with a few, but they are so well hidden in her esoteric, precious examples and tangents, that I would never have waded through them if I hadn't been assigned this book for a workshop. I'll probably answer the Concentric Circles questions at the end. I like the reference to Woolf's "intensification through compression." Warland's metaphors about scaffolding and depth of field and the 4 P's (predicament, proximity, pacing and pattern) might be helpful at some point. But I'd rather have had another "P": practical.
February 17, 2016
A very technical book about writing. Some of the concepts in this would not be understood by the neophyte, because they're explained in a rather esoteric way.
I loved this book and am so glad I finally read it. She explained some concepts that I have had trouble articulating.
Good for prose writers and poets.
(I would not recommend this as a beginning writing book, but I would recommend it to more knowledgeable writers and writing teachers).
I loved this book and am so glad I finally read it. She explained some concepts that I have had trouble articulating.
Good for prose writers and poets.
(I would not recommend this as a beginning writing book, but I would recommend it to more knowledgeable writers and writing teachers).
June 25, 2018
I have a hard time believing an author who writes, "Our ability to remember is dependent on breath. Our breath has an extensive vocabulary that mimetically expresses different states of memory." On top of this, white space on the page talks to us as do pencils, dogs' breath reactivates other dog scents in grass, and poems enter your heart as ideas enter your mind. Never mind breath and empty space on a page have no consciousness, a heart pumps blood and that's it, it has no feelings, and as far as I can discover, a dog's breath does nothing to activate other scents. My usual response is to call such a person batshit crazy and move on, but this book actually contains some nuggets.
The author's idea of heartwood is the most enlightening. Each story should have a central core she calls heartwood, a nexus of all lines in a story. This is often implied but rarely emphasised by other writers. Alice LaPlante comes close with her idea of hotspots. I started looking for heartwood after reading LaPlante's The Making of a Story, and it is serving me well so far.
The section on spatiotemporal structural strategies offered promises much but delivered little. I would have liked much more discussion and some practical examples. "Here's a poem I wrote that shows it," doesn't help much. I expected something akin to a discussion on Alice Munro's use of time in her stories or of other expansion techniques like comparison, contrast, atithesis, metaphore, etc. Something like Doug Glover's Attack of the Copula Spiders. Her essay seemed more like a drug-induced trip through ephemeral concepts. They seemed to apply more to scene linkage than paragraph containment. It's hard to know because her essay reads more like a dream than practical, pedagogic narrative. Still, this section prompted me to think about such techniques that go beyond Glover's or James Wood's in How Fiction Works. It has left me with work to do, so thanks for that.
On page 25 we find a glaring error. "Heartwood locates us in the moment of inception; and the narrative's concentric circles swell out from its centre." You know, I lose all faith in an author, particularly in a book on writing, the editor, beta readers, and the publisher who allow a semicolon in front of a conjunction like this. It was the start of my star subtraction. Worked on this book for how many years and this ugly punctuation creeps in? Tch.
My last complaint -- oh, the sections on the pencil and the empty page should not have been included -- is the concept of scored space. To me, this is a paradox. Space is the absence of scoring. Or is it the space created by scoring? I don't know because it is never explained, but every time I read the term, I cringe.
I'd recommend this book to someone with an artsey, dreamy, poetic flair for writing. I wouldn't put it in front of new writers, in a classoom, or a writer who actually studied and appreciates science and logic.
The author's idea of heartwood is the most enlightening. Each story should have a central core she calls heartwood, a nexus of all lines in a story. This is often implied but rarely emphasised by other writers. Alice LaPlante comes close with her idea of hotspots. I started looking for heartwood after reading LaPlante's The Making of a Story, and it is serving me well so far.
The section on spatiotemporal structural strategies offered promises much but delivered little. I would have liked much more discussion and some practical examples. "Here's a poem I wrote that shows it," doesn't help much. I expected something akin to a discussion on Alice Munro's use of time in her stories or of other expansion techniques like comparison, contrast, atithesis, metaphore, etc. Something like Doug Glover's Attack of the Copula Spiders. Her essay seemed more like a drug-induced trip through ephemeral concepts. They seemed to apply more to scene linkage than paragraph containment. It's hard to know because her essay reads more like a dream than practical, pedagogic narrative. Still, this section prompted me to think about such techniques that go beyond Glover's or James Wood's in How Fiction Works. It has left me with work to do, so thanks for that.
On page 25 we find a glaring error. "Heartwood locates us in the moment of inception; and the narrative's concentric circles swell out from its centre." You know, I lose all faith in an author, particularly in a book on writing, the editor, beta readers, and the publisher who allow a semicolon in front of a conjunction like this. It was the start of my star subtraction. Worked on this book for how many years and this ugly punctuation creeps in? Tch.
My last complaint -- oh, the sections on the pencil and the empty page should not have been included -- is the concept of scored space. To me, this is a paradox. Space is the absence of scoring. Or is it the space created by scoring? I don't know because it is never explained, but every time I read the term, I cringe.
I'd recommend this book to someone with an artsey, dreamy, poetic flair for writing. I wouldn't put it in front of new writers, in a classoom, or a writer who actually studied and appreciates science and logic.
September 27, 2017
A wonderful book of essays about writing. Each essay covers every aspect of writing, from pencils, computers, rooms, editing, and creating. A lot of great advice that will inspire and help you craft the best story or poem. Good ideas on finding the deeper message for your writing, the thing that you might be circling in your inscription.
Definitely going to be keeping this close to my desk for those times I'm struggling.
Definitely going to be keeping this close to my desk for those times I'm struggling.
June 13, 2020
A nuanced look on the art of writing. Great for any teachers of creative writing at the post-secondary level.
August 5, 2012
"Is a piece of grass a narrative?" Perhaps I should have known from the title that this is a self-relexive work, one that was more fun for the author to write than for the reader to absorb. That said, some pages reveal truths other writing books do not. The section on 'proximity' in narrative is particularly smart. Warland has a master's touch at the level of the sentence, but somebody should have stopped her from repeatedly referencing her own writing.
January 7, 2013
Most importantly, for this reader, Warland's pedagogy encourages an encounter with the powerful psycho-dynamic motivating forces to writing, and discusses how understanding them can guide approaches to writing them down most effectively.
March 16, 2012
This book is quietly deceptive. There are some real gems in there. Just keep reading.
January 19, 2011
Unique perspective and a balm when the going gets tough.
October 31, 2011
fantastic read. amazing flow of thought. has a lot of great invaluable insights you would be hard pressed to find on the act and process of writing.
January 5, 2015
This book reflects on the writing process through a series of essays, capturing the feeling and experience of writing better than any other I've read. It's a pleasant and an inspiring read.
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February 20, 2017Only liked the beginning
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews