Write Like Jo March from Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’

These quotes from Louisa May Alcott’s letters reveal her passion for life and her approach to writing

Louisa May Alcott: Life, Letters, and Journals. 1889. Ednah Cheney, editor. Photo by the author. Book from the collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

The 2019 film version of Little Women allows audiences once again to enjoy the frenetic and open-hearted energy of the fictional March family. As we know, the book was based closely on her own family and experiences.

However, Louisa May Alcott’s most famous novel does not just reveal her love for her family; Little Women also makes plain how her experiences and her passion turned her into the kind of writer who achieved fortune in her lifetime, and fame that has lasted more than a century beyond her death.

Little Women tells the story of Jo March’s progression from writing dramatic plays performed in the attic by her sisters, to writing bestselling morality tales, intrigues, and eventually a novel that spawned a bestselling series in its time and became a literary classic.

Toil at what allows you to write Little Women. Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash

In fact, the book follows Jo so closely, that one could treat the book as a writer’s manual of sorts, and glean valuable writing lessons as applicable today as they…