Abstract

The use of creative writing as a route to personal or professional development is a powerful therapeutic tool, yet often the most difficult part is knowing how and where to begin. The experiences of others, and the strategies and approaches they have used in their own writing, can provide tried-and-tested models for practice, and 'ways in' that facilitators might wish to recommend to others.

Writing Routes is an essential roadmap for anybody setting out on the journey of self-discovery through words. This diverse collection of short pieces introduce and demonstrate many different ways of getting into and thinking about creative writing for personal or professional development. Seventy contributors from a variety of different backgrounds and circumstances explain how they came to write a particular piece and why, how they found ways of transforming their experience into writing, and how it was beneficial to them. Their writing ranges widely, from journal entries and stream of consciousness to autobiography, poetry, fiction and drama, and the pieces are organised by theme and genre for ease of navigation, designed to be 'dipped into' as and when they are needed.

This rich and varied collection will provide writing practitioners, counsellors and other related professionals with ideas and techniques to share with their clients, and is a useful resource that individuals who write for their own personal and professional development will return to again and again.

Writing Routes is a diverse collection of personal journeys, which introduces and demonstrates many different ways of beginning and deepening creative writing for personal or professional development.
The Independent Practitioner
Detailed maps are needed for where to start in creative writing and how to proceed. Writing Routes provides just such an atlas, essential information for anybody setting out on the adventure of self-discovery through words.
from the Foreword by Gwyneth Lewis

Writing Routes is a book many of us have been waiting for, filling a gap in my bookshelf which I had vaguely discerned but not put shape to. Although the book builds on previous resource JKP handbooks, such as Writing Works (2006), Writing Routes is more than a collection of reflections on therapeutic experience. This is a well-designed navigation tool for exploring the field of therapeutic writing... I would recommend Writing Routes not just to those working in the field, but to any individual embarking on their own

therapeutic writing.

Lapidus Journal
This very readable anthology collects together over 70 contributors who offer a diverse and rich array of personal experience of using creative writing.. I read the writers' words and pieces over a long Bank Holiday weekend by dipping into different parts as the mood took me, and was variously heartened, confounded, warmed and amused. At times, I was stopped in my tracks with the pain and distress of some of the work... a truly wonderful collection of views and writings which I recommend to any reader, and especially to those who might feel the beginnings of a need to put themselves on paper.
Therapeutic Communities Journal