D. Margaret Hoffman / DMargaret Hoffman
Saving Our Lives: Volume Two-Essays to Release the Writer in YOU is a book of personal essays and writing advice designed to entertain readers and to encourage writers. Hoffman fashions her opinions, experiences and life stories into essays on a variety of topics with the intent of convincing readers that their opinions, experiences and life stories are valuable and worth saving-one small piece at a time.Volume Two continues the work begun in Saving Our Lives: Volume One-Essays to Inspire the Writer in YOU with thirty-one new essays and over three-hundred writing prompts. Essays cover everything from woodpeckers and funerals to geniuses and girdles with a special section of travel essays that coax readers to look at the world around them in small and wonderful ways. The message here is that there is value in the details of our lives, if only we can find ways to focus on them, capture them and save them for all time. Hoffman has found a way to do just that and uses her book as an example of how all of us can save our stories if we are committed to the task.Here is an excerpt from the Introduction to Saving Our Lives: Volume Two-Essays to Release the Writer in YOU.I wish I had a book sale for every time I’ve heard someone say, 'My life is crazy! I could write a book!' But I suppose I’d have to refund the money for everyone who’s said it and then didn’t do it-which is just about everyone I’ve ever heard say it. So, then, you might say, if people whose lives are fraught with drama don’t get it done, what hope is there for me? My life is so ordinary. Nothing interesting ever happens to me. What is there worth writing about? Well, let’s see.Volume Two is the second installment of a three-part series. Individually or as a set, the Saving Our Lives books provide both readers and writers with a fresh, entertaining and manageable approach to memoir--and life.
