The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work Book

	Introduction
	The Seduction of the Text	3
	The Importance of Childhood	11
	Looking for the Spark	19
	How to Identify and Nurture Young Writers	25
	Touched by an Angel	33
	The Leap from Necessity to Invention	39
	A Real-Life Education	46
	Emerging from Under Your Rejection Slips	52
	Being a Product of Your Dwelling Place	58
	Doing It for Love	64
	Too Happy for Words	73
	Using My Father's Story	78
	Between Origins and Art	84
	The Writer As Outlaw	90
	From Memory to the Imagination	95
	Can Whites Write About Blacks?	103
	In Praise of Silence	111
	Bicultural, Adrift, and Wandering	118
	On Finding a Latino Voice	126
	Living in Irish, Writing in English	134
	Holidays at the Keyboard Inn	143
	The Passionate Researcher	150
	From Packrat to Historian	156
	Climbing Into Another Head	162
	Hunter of Metaphors	168
	Following the Script	178
	Headbirths: Bookish Midwifery	184
	Guided by Voices: The Work of a Ghostwriter	194
	From Will-of-the-Wisp to Full-Blown Novel	205
	Reincarnation, Translation and Adventure	212
	Master of My Universe	221
	Sounds and Sensibilities	228
	Writer with Scalpel	235
	A Chronicle of the Plague Years	242
	On Being a Novice Playwright	250
	Acting Out, Letting Go	258
	Pen Names Galore	264
	Summer Lite	270
	History Is Their Beat: The New Journalist Historians	279
	A Novel Approach to Reality: Basing a Story in Facts	289
	Making the Truth Believable	297
	Describing the World As It Is, Not At It Would Be	304
	The Political Memoir: Taking Note of History	312
	President in Search of a Publisher	322
	Biographer, Get a Life	330
	From the Clinic	338
	Notes from the Road	344
	Natural Selections	351
	Speaking Up for the Environment	359
	The Trouble with Finishing	367
	The Hardest Critics	373
	Literary Executions	380
	Taking It All Back	387
	Writer, Be Afraid	393
	In Search of the Next Idea	399