The art of writing is full of technicalities, duties, observations, and practicalities. In this book, Meyer digs into his past and explains why a writer does what he or she does. In For a Writer, Bruce Meyer is not offering a how—to book. Instead, he delivers a series of essays that amount to a memoir of the craft.
Borne out of a series of discussions with University of Windsor Publishing Practicum students who produced Meyer's recent collection of poems, Grace of Falling Stars entirely by Zoom conversations and lengthy chats, these essays address questions of where a writer should look for inspiration, how that inspiration can be spun into a poem or a short story, the traditions a writer needs to know about, and the needs a writer has for a place to write, the tools for writing, and the point of understanding the tradition of writing become necessities in the practice of the art.
Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own said that a writer (now in the broad, transgender context) needs just enough money to live on and a room of their own. Geoffrey Chaucer more than seven hundred years ago warned that life is short and learning the craft can take a lifetime. In this memoir, a bildungsroman of reminiscence and adventures in writing, Bruce Meyer recalls his past and his growth as a writer and engages the questions posed by the students who brought his book into the world. The questions of those lively, young minds, triggered experiences from Meyer's past so that he can pass on his thoughts for a writer long after he has written his last word.