Writers on Writing, Volume II: More Collected Essays from The New York Times

by The New York Times, Jane Smiley (Introduction)

Overview

"Glimpses into writers and the circumstances that shape them . . . Valuable gleanings."-Kirkus Reviews

In a second volume of original essays drawn from the long-running New York Times column, Writers on Writing brings together another group of contemporary literature's finest voices to muse on the challenges and gifts of language and creativity.
The pieces range from taciturn, hilarious advice for aspiring writers to thoughtful, soul-wrenching reflections on writing in the midst of national tragedy. William Kennedy talks about the intersecting lives of real and imagined Albany politics; Susan Isaacs reveals her nostalgia for a long-retired protagonist; and Elmore Leonard offers pithy rules for letting the writing, and not the writer, take charge. With contributions from Diane Ackerman, Margaret Atwood, Frank Conroy, Mary Karr, Patrick McGrath, Arthur Miller, Amy Tan, and Edmund White, Writers on Writing, Volume II offers an uncommon and revealing view of the writer's world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805075885
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/2004
Series:	Writers on Writing (Times Books Paperback) , #2
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Jane Smiley is the author of ten works of fiction, including Good Faith; Horse Heaven; A Thousand Acres, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; and Moo. She lives in northern California.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Poems Foster Self-Discovery	1
	A Path Taken, with All the Certainty of Youth	9
	Essentials Get Lost in the Shuffle of Publicity	13
	Timeless Tact Helps Sustain a Literary Time Traveler	19
	Yes, There Are Second Acts (Literary Ones) in American Lives	25
	Footprints of Greatness on Your Turf	31
	New Insights into the Novel? Try Reading Three Hundred	37
	Returning to Proust's World Stirs Remembrance	43
	Forget Ideas, Mr. Author. What Kind of Pen Do You Use?	49
	In Paris and Moscow, a Novelist Finds His Time and Place	55
	Recognizing the Book That Needs to Be Written	61
	How to Insult a Writer	67
	Calming the Inner Critic and Getting to Work	71
	A Narrator Leaps Past Journalism	77
	They Leap from Your Brain Then Take Over Your Heart	83
	When Inspiration Stared Stoically from an Old Photograph	89
	A Career Despite Dad's Advice	93
	Seeing the Unimaginable Freezes the Imagination	99
	Hemingway's Blessing, Copland's Collaboration	105
	Returning to the Character Who Started It All	111
	Negotiating the Darkness, Fortified by Poets' Strength	117
	Hometown Boy Makes Waves	125
	As Her Son Creates His Story, a Mother Waits for the Ending	133
	The Glory of a First Book	137
	Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle	143
	A Famous Author Says: "Swell Book! Loved It!"	147
	Hearing the Notes That Aren't Played	153
	Heroism in Trying Times	157
	Shattering the Silence, Illuminating the Hatred	163
	Overcome by Intensity, Redeemed by Effort	169
	A Novelist's Life Is Altered by Her Alter Ego	175
	Computers Invite a Tangled Web of Complications	181
	Saluting All the King's Mentors	187
	Why Not Put Off Till Tomorrow the Novel You Could Begin Today?	191
	The Eye of the Reporter, the Heart of the Novelist	195
	A Retreat from the World Can Be a Perilous Journey	201
	After Six Novels in Twelve Years, a Character Just Moves On	207
	Fiction and Fact Collide, with Unexpected Consequences	213
	Confession Begets Connection	219
	A Storyteller Finds Comfort in a Cloak of Anonymity	225
	Autumnal Accounting Endangers Happiness	231
	Family Ghosts Hoard Secrets That Bewitch the Living	237
	A Bedeviling Question in the Cadence of English	245
	Still Replying to Grandma's Persistent "And Then?"	251
	A Pseudonym Returns from an Alter-Ego Trip, with New Tales to Tell	257
	Before a Rendezvous with the Muse, First Select the Music	261