Book Description
Brilliant inspiration from some of our most renowned and
respected fiction writers on the craft of writing and the
writing life. "Abandon the idea that you are ever going
to finish . . . write just one page for each day. . . . Never
correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down,"
instructs John Steinbeck. "When your interest is
engaged, i.e., in the sounds and smells of your city, you
write admirably. But until these details become the envelope
of a clear and legible emotion, ambition, or dilemma, the
reader's interest, while respectful, will be to some extent
merely polite," writes John Updike to Nicholas Delbanco.
Andre Dubus reflects, "I learned from Hemingway to stop
each day's work in mid-sentence, while it is still going
well, then to exercise the body, and not to think about the
story till you go to your desk each day." Tobias Wolff
muscles a student who does not take his craft or talent
seriously enough. Ray Bradbury encourages a young writer not
to take the academic route. Rosellen Brown, Ann Beattie, and
Joyce Carol Oates give the reader tactics for surviving the
writing life. As Frederick Busch says in his introduction to
this collection, "this is a book of counsel and
sustenance. . . . The readers of this book are about to
receive the wisdom of those who know, from the inside of the
process, what a writer might need, from time to time, to
hear."
