What It Means to Write

"Think outside the box. Have a breakthrough. Avoid writer's block. In a time when people are increasingly curious about how to stand out from the crowd, the word 'creativity' can seem over-used and vague. What is it, really? In What It Means to Write, Adrian McKerracher examines the creative person in us all. His search takes him from Vancouver to Havana to Buenos Aires, where his mantra--I'm here to meet writers--leads to poignant new insights into a life of letters. Through encounters with artists of all kinds, famous or pedestrian, McKerracher traces a socio-cultural history of the meaning of writing, each vignette a meditation on the way that metaphor limits and liberates understanding. Creativity is a process, a possession, a relation, an algorithm, a game, and more. But the result goes far beyond an archive of the figurative. Along the way, a labyrinth of chance reunites him with old friends, threatens him with violence, and teases the invitation to remain forever in a place that is both real and imagined. His journey from cafés to libraries to late night living rooms embodies the structure of a bold new methodology for interpreting the complexity of creativity, demonstrating the tools for working productively with ambiguity and rebuilding meaning, one metaphor at a time. Told in character-driven narrative pulses that reflect on the nature of belonging, understanding, and loving, What It Means To Write is a celebration of the possibilities of both language and silence."--