Writing Through the Pause - by Jordan Rosenfeld (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A compassionate writing guide for women who are navigating midlife's turbulent transitions and its profound impact on creativity, identity, and self-expression.

Drawing from personal experiences, research, and 28 conversations with other women and femmes, Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing reframes the challenges of midlife--not as a crisis--but as a vital journey full of creative gifts that can be mined and polished into brilliant writing.

While the paths to your writing practice may change shape and direction, Writing Through the Pause offers commiseration, reassurance, and a variety of strategies to encourage midlife writers to mine the rich depths of this pause. With a little help, writers at midlife or any other difficult period, can discover renewed authenticity and power in their writing and themselves.

Review Quotes

"Jordan Rosenfeld has written the handbook for women writing in the age of change. As a woman who didn't start writing novels until midlife, I loved this guide. It's full of advice, anecdotes and wisdom from other women on the wisdom--and challenge--that midlife can bring. If you want your 50s and above to be the most creative of your life, this is the book to read." - Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder and The Talking BoneA compassionate and practical guide, Writing Through the Pause is THE book that creative Gen Xers need now, millennials will soon want, and Boomers (and beyond) will cherish as a resource they wish existed when they were navigating the intersection of menopause and creativity. -- Liz Prato, author of Kids In America: A Gen X Reckoning, and Purgatoire

In Writing Through the Pause, Jordan Rosenfeld reframes midlife not as decline, but as a powerful threshold, one that invites reckoning and creative embodiment...She understands that creativity at midlife is rarely linear: it is cyclical, embodied, and often born from loss, caregiving, anger, and reinvention...this is a wise guide for anyone seeking to mine experience for meaning and transform the "messy middle" into art. -- Shavaun Scott, psychotherapist and author of Nightbird.

What do you want to say, and how do you want to say it now that you are free? This question moves like a wave with wondrous gravitational force through Jordan Rosenfeld's Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Creativity. This freedom, though, is hard won as this book reveals: we survived our early years of girlhood, our twenties and thirties, and have arrived at the center of our lives. What now? What words will we choose for our truth, our light, our losses, our joys? I wish I had this book on my nightstand to read across my forties and into my fifties -- it would have been the best of companions: reassuring, motivating, compassionate, knowing. Now that I do, I know that as a midlife writer, I feel less like a satellite spinning in my own universe and more connected to other midlife women writers holding on, bearing down, and writing our hearts out. Because of this book. Read it. Write. Read it again. Write more." -- Kerry Neville, author of Momma May Be Mad: A Memoir

Writing Through the Pause is a necessary, vibrant book overflowing with insights, complex conversation and the warmth of good company. To live through menopause can be both a struggle and a miracle. It's crucial to have these conversations--about how to exist, in the shifting terrain of the body, the mind, in creativity and vitality. As a writer and a person who has undergone the physical changes of menopause, I know I will reach for this book again and again. -- Monica Drake, author of The Stud Book and a contributor to The Big M.

Writing Through the Pause is a generous, wise, and essential guide through the eras of our lives when the creative process feels distant. In this book, the "pause" transforms from a barrier to an opportunity for agency, outlining innovative (and accessible) rituals and strategies from a chorus of talented writers. It reminded me to honor my body and the moment I'm actually living in, right now. The writing is exquisite. The creative pathways forged are joyful and inviting. I'll return to this book again and again. -- Asha Dore, journalist, podcast host and writer

Midlife for many of us can feel like an upheaval, being in a foreign land without a map, and like a sudden assault to not just the body, but to the mind. This book is for anyone-not just those who refer to themselves as writers-looking to explore this period of their life through creativity, specifically with writing. This marvel of a book is for anyone who feels they're losing access to their creative selves (you're not.) Jordan Rosenfeld both ensures and encourages readers to see this period in our lives as opportunity, rather than crisis. Writing Through the Pause offers not only practical tips, but stories from other humans who've been through this period and not only survived, but thrived. It's full of writing prompts to help build a way through the weirdness that is midlife, but it's also filled with so much heart. And that intersection is where magic resides. -- Jennifer Pastiloff, best-selling author of On Being Human and Proof of Life

"Midlife can silence your creativity--or change it entirely. In Writing Through the Pause, Rosenfeld offers a compassionate, insightful guide to navigating that shift and finding your way back to the work that matters most." --Jennifer Banash, author of The Rise and Fall of Ava Arcana and The Essential Elizabeth Stone