An inspiring guide to focusing on what matters most in life—and hitting delete on what doesn’t.
Life is noisier, messier, and more complicated than ever. In our quest to keep up, we can lose sight of what we care about most, and instead try to do it all—with mixed results.
In this beautiful call to examine and edit our lives, writer Elisabeth Sharp McKetta shares eight simple ways to cut through the clutter, drama, and overwhelm of modern life to live with more intention and joy. Inspired by her own experiments with reprioritizing, tiny house living, and finding the right balance of work and family time, Edit Your Life brings together personal narrative and practical takeaway, with inspiring results.
Whether you’re pivoting, downsizing, relocating, or just ready to have more time and energy for the people and activities you love most, this engaging and practical guide will bring you on a journey of exploration and reflection—and point you toward the life you truly want to live.
Elisabeth Sharp McKetta is an award-winning author, teacher, and speaker. She is the author of twelve previous books, including the writing guide The Creative Year. Her shorter writings have appeared in Real Simple, The Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. Since 2012, she has taught writing at Harvard Extension School, where she won the 2018 James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Writing Award. She currently lives with her family in Boise, Idaho.
“Living intentionally in our messy world requires work. Fortunately, in this inspiring and practical guide, Elisabeth shows us how to edit out what doesn’t matter—so we have more time for what does.”
—Laura Vanderkam, author of Tranquility by Tuesday
“Edit Your Life is a practical and philosophical guide to editing as a life practice, and a bighearted call to live a happier, more deliberate life.”
—Kim Cross, author of What Stands in a Storm
“A book of distilled wisdom and a life-transforming guide inviting readers to personalize what an ‘edited’ life means to them and what they need to let go.”
—Elizabeth Filippouli, editor of From Women to the World: Letters for a New Century
Praise for Previous Works by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta
“Elisabeth McKetta is a wonderful storyteller who takes us generously into her life, which always seems initially off-balance, full of falls, disappointments, and reversals, and yet, in the end, joyous.”
—Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
“Captivating and evocative and original.”
—Grace Dane Mazur, author of The Garden Party
“Elisabeth Sharp McKetta examines the work of becoming oneself through the battle between the longing for travel and the desire for home.”
—Kyoko Mori, author of The Dream of Water and Shizuko’s Daughter
“For some years now, I have been reading and appreciating Elisabeth Sharp McKetta’s exceptional Poetry for Strangers project. With generosity, inclusiveness, and openness to the wonders of nature and the human spirit, McKetta reaches out to those strangers, encountered by chance, inviting them to participate in an art form that non-writers so often consider alien territory. She is a bridge-builder of the most original kind.”
—Lydia Davis, author of Can’t and Won’t and Essays One
