Writing is a solitary sport - but none of us can do it without good company at crucial moments. The authors of the pieces collected here share honestly, and often humorously, their thoughts and feelings about writing and the writer's life, and can provide you with the good company you need to get on with your own work. This collection of inspiring and useful essays and writing exercises is the next best thing to having an experienced writer at your side. These twenty-nine pieces, more than half never published in book form, include selections as unusual and diverse as B. F. Skinner's "How to Discover What You Have to Say"; Brett 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 Mairs's "The Writer's Thin Skin and Faint Heart." Among the other contributors are Gloria Naylor, Stanley Kunitz, Bernard Shaw, Natalie Goldberg, Anne Tyler, Rita Dove, Peter Elbow, and Gail Godwin.