CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Sourcebook for Creative Writing

Great writing tool. Sheds light on everyday situations faced by writers. Use it as a reference as well as to springboard thoughts in other directions.

I would rather describe it as an amateurish attempt to motivate writers. There are certain essays that offer insight, butmost do not. i am disappointed.

In their 2018 collection of the best, most vibrant and innovative voices in contemporary literature, titled CREDO, Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai make one thing abundantly clear. This is the conviction, the credo, indeed, that art is a belief. It is a practice but also a conviction. It is the investigation of what David Shields in his piece here calls solving the complexity of being alive. In this manner, in the first section of the manifesto Richard Kenny, Lillian Ann Slugocki, Jade Sylvan and others explore the intricacies, the difficulties and terrors of creating. Ranging across many genres, they thoughtfully yet sensuously construct, deconstruct and reconstruct the writing process. While some explore memoir and its difficult negotiation of self as subject, Stephanie Burt explains that every poem is, essentially, a holding apart and up of a part of oneself as something to see, to show, and to be seen by itself. That poetry is a necessity, not an indulgence, to find the ineluctable and the elusive in a literal world. Transformation is at the heart of CREDO, be it transformations between genders and sexes, past and present selves, old and new formal experiments, or indeed an old love and a new. Caitlyn Johnson and Jeff Fearnside give us good housekeeping advice on writing and Christine Johnson-Duell urges us to just 'try.’ Thade Correa explains what it is to be blessed by being shattered. John Laue writes about the bittersweet nature of some experiences of being published.Neither is sometimes irreverent and sometimes gentle and self-deprecating humor missing, as in the writing of Brenda Moguez or Amy Rutten. In the craft essays of Eva Langston, Matthew Zapruder, Maya Sonenberg, Melinda Coombs, Jessica Reidy, Robert Pinsky, Ariel Francisco, Rita Banerjee, Diana Norma Szokolyai, and Kara Provost, among others, one finds thrill, relief, humor, recipes, and advice to always do yoga and meditate, on genre writing, on travel, on sleep(a lot!!), on quirks and attributes, on summer, and more workshops! Kathleen Spivack -- an institution, a school, and a muse in herself -- pours out generous tips and suggestions that enrich the life and process of any writer.Any literary collection should be more than the sum of its parts. After being read it should certainly return in flashes of discrete recollection of voices, ideas, techniques, inspiration and resolve. Certainly, CREDO is all of that. Indeed, every writer in it, though it has only been possible to name a few, provides all and more of these things. Beyond and above, however, CREDO is a manifesto. And like any other manifesto in history and society, it comes to us on the heels of many certainties dissolving, many freedoms disappearing, many civilities vanishing, and many icons rolling on the ground. And in the best spirit of response to this critical moment, CREDO is a manifesto that reminds us of the equally critical need to support diversity of voices, opinions, gender identities, lifestyles, creative avenues and pathways, and last but not least alliances and friendships. I recommend it unstintingly to anyone who loves to write and to read.