The Writer's Home Companion: An Anthology of the World's Best Writing Advice, From Keats to KunitzJoan Bolker A Boston Globe Bestseller Writing is a solitary sport—but none of us can do it without good company at crucial moments. This spirited collection of inspiring and useful essays and exercises on the craft of writing is the next best thing to having an experienced writer at your side. These twenty-nine pieces, more than half of which have never been published in book form, include selections as unusual and diverse as behaviorist B. F. Skinner's "How to Discover What You Have to Say"; Brett Candlish Millier's investigation of the seventeen drafts of Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art"; Ursula Le Guin's "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?"; Anne Eisenberg's "E-Mail and the New Epistolary Age"; and Nancy Mair's "The Writer's Thin Skin and Faint Heart." Other contributors include Gloria Naylor, Stanley Kunitz, Bernard Shaw, Natalie Goldberg, Anne Tyler, Rita Dove, Peter Elbow, and Gail Godwin. |
Contents
Ursula Le Guin Where Do You Get Your Ideas From? | 4 |
Gloria Naylor The Love of Books | 15 |
Murray So You Want to Be a Writer? | 26 |
Peter Elbow Freewriting | 46 |
Email as genre 17882 | 60 |
B F Skinner How to Discover What You Have | 76 |
Fatigue avoiding subjectmatter | 87 |
John Keats First Page of To Autumn | 94 |
Finney Nikky The Unclaimed 1617 | 138 |
Motherhood and Poetry | 141 |
BECOMING A WRITER | 165 |
For Strong Women Piercy | 198 |
Helen Benedict A Writers First Readers | 202 |
Genius 5758 16263 | 204 |
Natalie Goldberg Writing as a Practice | 230 |
265 | |
The Paris Review Interviews | 100 |
Feedback 2029 | 118 |
Ruth Whitman Climbing the Jacobs Ladder | 130 |
Common terms and phrases
A. R. Ammons Alicia Ostriker Anne Tyler art of losing asked audience B. F. Skinner begin believe Bishop bull child course Describe draft Draw e-mail Elizabeth essay experience fact feedback feel final stanza freewriting Gail Godwin give grade Griselda happen hard to master Harvard ideas imagine Invent keep kind knew language letter listen lives look loss matter mean Metzger mind mother never novel paper person Peter Elbow piece of writing play poem poet poetry readers Reprinted by permission Rita Dove Room of One's s/he sense sentence someone speak Stanley Kunitz story talk teacher tell there's things thought tion trying turn understand Ursula Le Guin verbal behavior villanelle voice voicelessness Watcher wheelbarrow woman women Woolf words writ writing process written wrote