Writers on writing : more collected essays from The New York times / Introduction by Jane Smiley.

Vol. 2 has subtitle: More collected essays from The New York times.

Poems foster self-discovery / Diane Ackerman -- A path taken, with all the certainty of youth / Margaret Atwood -- Essentials get lost in the shuffle of publicity / Ann Beattie -- Timeless tact helps sustain a literary time traveler / Geraldine Brooks -- Yes, there are second acts (literary ones) in American lives / Alan Cheuse -- Footprints of greatness on your turf / Frank Conroy -- New insights into the novel? Try reading three hundred / Chitra Divakaruni -- Returning to Proust's world stirs remembrance / Leslie Epstein -- Forget ideas, mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use? / Stephen Fry -- In Paris and Moscow, a novelist finds his time and place / Alan Furst -- Recognizing the book that needs to be written / Dorothy Gallagher -- How to insult a writer / Herbert Gold -- Calming the inner critic and getting to work / Allegra Goodman -- A narrator leaps past journalism / Vivian Gornick -- They leap from your brain then take over your heart / Andrew Greeley -- When inspiration stared stoically from an old photograph / Kathryn Harrison -- A career despite Dad's advice / Michael Holroyd -- Seeing the unimaginable freezes the imagination / A.M. Homes -- Hemingway's blessing, Copland's collaboration / A.E. Hotchner -- Returning to the character who started it all / Susan Isaacs -- Negotiating the darkness, fortified by poets' strength / Mary Karr -- Hometown boy makes waves / William Kennedy -- As her son creates his story, a mother waits for the ending / Beth Kephart -- The glory of a first book / Brad Leithauser -- Easy on the adverbs, exclamation points and especially hooptedoodle / Elmore Leonard -- A famous author says: "Swell book! Loved it!" / Elinor Lipman -- Hearing the notes that aren't played / David Mamet -- Heroism in trying times / Patrick McGrath -- Shattering the silence, illuminating the hatred / Arthur Miller -- Overcome by intensity, redeemed by effort / Honor Moore -- A novelist's life is altered by her alter ego / Marcia Muller -- Computers invite a tangled web of complications / P.J. O'Rourke -- Saluting all the king's mentors / Jay Parini -- Why not put off till tomorrow the novel you could begin today? / Ann Patchett -- The eye of the reporter, the heart of the novelist / Anna Quindlen -- A retreat from the world can be a perilous journey / Jonathan Rosen -- After six novels in twelve years, a character just moves on / James Sallis -- Fiction and fact collide, with unexpected consequences / John Sedgwick -- Confession begets connection / David Shields -- A storyteller finds comfort in a cloak of anonymity / Susan Richards Shreve -- Autumnal accounting endangers happiness / Richard Stern -- Family ghosts hoard secrets that bewitch the living / Amy Tan -- A bedeviling question in the cadence of English / Shashi Tharoor -- Still replying to Grandma's persistent "And then?" / Frederic Tuten -- A pseudonym returns from an alter-ego trip, with new tales to tell / Donald E. Westlake -- Before a rendezvous with the muse, first select the music / Edmund White.

Writers on writing brings together more than forty of contemporary literature's finest voices. Drawn from the New York Times column of the same name, it features essays by an extraordinary group of prizewinning and bestselling contributors. The pieces range from reflections on the daily craft of writing to the intersection of art's and life's consequential moments. Authors discuss what impels them to write: creating a sense of control in a turbulent universe; bearing witness to events that would otherwise be lost in history or within the writer's soul; recapturing a fragment of time. Others praise mentors and lessons, whether from the classroom, daily circumstances, or the pages of a favorite writer. For anyone interested in the art and rewards of writing, Writers on writing offers an uncommon and revealing view of a writer's world. Contributors include Russell Banks, Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, Louise Erdrich, Richard Ford, Carl Hiaasen, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Sue Miller, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Marge Piercy, Annie Proulx, Carol Shields, Jane Smiley, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Elie Wiesel.