Keep Moving

by Maggie Smith

“What do you do religiously – not only often, but with great love and faith? Writing, painting, running, volunteering? Do one of those things today; do something religiously.”

This book is basically a series of short vignettes about the ways the author, poet Maggie Smith, coped with her divorce and eventually embraced the new circumstances of her life. These narrative sections are very short – never more than a few pages – and each one is followed up with a handful of Tweet-length motivational blurbs that all end with the same refrain: KEEP MOVING.

That sounds corny, and sometimes is, but there’s also wisdom and sensitivity in those short quotes. Their power comes from the fact that the author was writing these (if I’m not mistaken) to motivate herself. And in my own experience dealing with hard times, “keep moving” is pretty sound advice to use as a starting point.

Ultimately this book was much shorter and less of a narrative than I expected. Good for what it was, but probably not something I will return to.