Ellen Gilchrist, now 87, has never written that one book that might have made her a big name in literary circles. Just the same, novels such as “The Annunciation” and “The Anna Papers” and short story collections such as “In the Land of Dreamy Dreams” and “Victory Over Japan” have been satisfying discerning readers since the 1980s. Her 2005 book “The Writing Life” gives us a look at the woman reflected in her fiction.

The book's brief essays, often repetitive, are divided into three overlapping categories: her life, her writing and her teaching. The latter — she had been teaching creative writing at the University of Arkansas for four years at the time this book was published — seems to have been its trigger. It was inspired by young people, she says, another way for her to help young writers become better writers.

So devoted has she become to teaching writing that she confesses her own writing has suffered as a result. Although "Writing Is Rewriting" is a slogan she impresses on her students again and again, she admits she has lost patience with rewriting. She insists she prefers her original drafts, and if they don't please her editor, so be it. She has come to the point in her career where she takes more pleasure in her students' successes than her own.

Gilchrist herself was taught by Eudora Welty, whose work she adores. She also has high praise for such writers as William Faulkner and Larry McMurtry, and the collected advice of Ernest Hemingway, “On Writing,” is something she always recommends to her students. Her favorite Sunday afternoon pursuit has for years been reading Shakespeare's plays aloud with a group of friends.

Well short of being an autobiography, “On Writing” nevertheless shows us a great deal about Gilchrist's eccentric life, her many marriages, her devotion to her sons and her grandchildren and her almost parental love for her students. The book was written over a period of years, which helps explain why she repeats herself so much. Only a few of the essays have been published elsewhere. The essays, rarely more than three or four pages each, never fail to entertain and, if the reader is another writer, inform. ( )

I enjoyed this memoir quite a bit, especially for Gilchrist's descriptions of her time in Jackson and her friendship with Eudora Welty. There were many insights into the life of the writer and balancing life and art as well. ( )

Not only is this book by a favorite author of mine, it has excellent advice for writers and insights into finding content and feeding the muse. Several bits were repeated and reinforced: rewrite, rewrite, and again, rewrite. Poetry is excellent for refining one's language. Write what you know, which also means believe that your life experiences have merit to tell a story. Tell a story. I just started Walter Mosely's book on writing, and in the first few pages, he is saying almost the same things (his book review will be next week). He adds to write daily without fail, which Ms. Gilchrist intimates throughout her book. I'm going to purchase this work. And, the icing for me is that she lives in Fayetteville, AR (one of my childhood homes) and loves it there. I enjoyed hearing her talk lovingly about the university town that I know so well. ( )

Ellen Gilchrist's personality and writing voice are pure inspiration. She is sociable, aware, curious, human and flawed; even better she is able to make light of those flaws. So this is a guide to writing in that it offers some concrete suggestions but is more of a guide to getting inspired and finding out how to be a writer. Another advantage this book holds for writers is that she did not begin writing seriously until age 40, and now, several decades later, she has published a great deal and teaches writing at a university.

She clearly has a great deal to teach all of us who write or who wish to write about the importance of life experiences, and of using our challenges, failings and faults to grow as writers and as people.

Gilchrist talks a good deal about negativity being especially harmful for writers, negative criticism in particular. She suggests that we look for the joy in the writings of others, and she rails against deconstructionism. We are trying to build and create, after all. ( )