Stephen Wade

writer and teacher, I have come to see that many people need help and guidance in the effort to understand that stock of words which lies dormant and which we call upon when we desire to explain who we are and what we want.

This book is not a magical spell for transforming blandness and discontent into something rich and strange.

about how you can work creative thinking into your life in a way that will give a spiritual, instinctual quality to your life; it is concerned with the ways in which language is your most powerful tool for working out change and renewal.

There are no formulae, but there are methods of cultivating what is there, dormant in you and in us all.

In my years as a teacher of creative writing and as a tutor for mature students, I have seen that a desire to get an education, to ‘learn everything’ as Willy Russell’s Rita says, is often no more than something else in disguise: a lack of acceptance of what we are.

and that well-being is central to all quality of living.

This society instils in us a culture of success. We are told to look beautiful, to move gracefully, to perform so that we do well in interviews; we are told that certain body-shapes are acceptable,

This is that element in being human which keeps us content and fulfilled even with the meanest, least materially successful life.

This is the pool of silent, latent and perhaps infinite creative pleasure in our imaginations. How do we access this?

People tend to think in terms of potential negativity,