The write prescription : telling your story to live with and beyond illness / Judith Hannan ; Foreword by Charles Barber.

First trade paperback original edition

Introduction; How To Use This Book; Part I; Getting Started; Just Show Up; Your Assignment; Getting Here; Free Association; Making Metaphor; The Five Senses; Look Closely; Listen Closely: A Warm-Up For Your Ears; Change Your Seat; List Making; Text, Tweet, Haiku; In the Image of a Person; If You Were the Weather; This Is How It's Done; A Hand Portrait; Part II; Parting the Curtains, Setting the Scenes; When You Found Out; Waiting; Why or Why Not; Naming an Illness; Writing It Raw; Domes of Words; Where Do I Stand By the Bed; I Should Have Said & I Remember, I Remember NotTravelogue of Illness; We Are Family; The Third Thing; Cast of Characters; What Friends Are For; They Said What?; Sense and Sensuality; I Know; Retreats and Rituals of Comfort; Sacred Time and Spaces; Animal Therapy; Greedy Hearts; What Now; The Phantom Road; Part III; Inside the System; The Good Doctor; The Good Patient; Healing Hands; Bits and Bytes; The Fourth Amendment; Medicine as a Second Language; Define Dignity; Tell Me Where It Hurts; The Ideal Hospital Room; Insurance; Appendices; Quick Prompts; An Ending and a Beginning: Where Are You Now? After the First DraftTime is Distance; What's It About?; Read Aloud; Tighten, Tighten, Tighten; Use Action Words; Show Don't Tell; Be Specific; Time Is Distance (Part II); Other Readers; Bibliography; Acknowledgments.

A hands-on, hearts-on guide to writing about illness. Using intimate prompts and personal stories, Judith Hannan takes the reader and emerging-writer on a journey through what it means to reckon with illness. Having gone through her daughter's cancer diagnosis and treatments, Hannan is an experienced, thoughtful, and caring guide for anyone wanting to find a way through the labyrinth of the illness experience.