THE WRITING LIFE WRITERS ON HOW THEY THINK AND WORK A COLLECTION FROM THE Washington Post Book World EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY BY Marie Arana PUBLICAFFAIRS New York CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BY MARIE ARANA XIH PART ONE: ON BECOMING A WRITER The Seduction of the Text 3 FrancineDuPlessix Gray The Importance of Childhood n Joyce Carol Oates Looking for the Spark 19 Joanna Trollope How to Identify and Nurture Young Writers 25 James Michener Touched by an Angel 33 MaryHiggins Clark The Leap from Necessity to Invention 39 John Keegan A Real-Life Education 46 Susan Minot Emerging from Under Your Rejection Slips 52 Muriel Spark viii Contents BeingaProductofYourDwellingPlace 58 Nadine Gordimer Doing It for Love 64 Erica Jong PART TWO: RAW MATERIAL Too Happy for Words 73 Alice McDermott Using My Father's Story 78 CraigNova Between Origins and Art 84 George P. Pelecanos The Writer As Outlaw 90 Jayne AnnePhillips From Memory to the Imagination 95 Ntozake Shange Can Whites Write About Blacks? 103 Scott Turow In Praise of Silence in John Edgar Wideman Bicultural, Adrift, and Wandering 118 Anita Desai Contents ix On Finding a Latino Voice 126 Julia Alvarez Living in Irish, Writing in English 134 JohnBanville PART THREE: HUNKERING DOWN Holidays at the Keyboard Inn 143 Wendy Wasserstein The Passionate Researcher 150 Patricia Cornwell From Packrat to Historian 156 Stanley Karnow Climbing Into Another Head 162 David McCullough Hunter of Metaphors 168 Ray Bradbury Following the Script 178 EdmundMorris Headbirths: Bookish Midwifery 184 Michael Korda Guided by Voices: The Work of a Ghostwriter 194 David Chanoff Contents PART FOUR: OLD BOTTLE, NEW WINE From Will-of-the-Wisp to Full-Blown Novel 205 E. L. Doctorow Reincarnation, Translation and Adventure 212 UmbertoEco Master of My Universe 221 Stanley Elkin Sounds and Sensibilities 228 NedRorem Writer with Scalpel 235 Richard Selzer A Chronicle of the Plague Years 242 Reynolds Price On Being a Novice Playwright 250 CynthiaOzick Acting Out, Letting Go 258 Gloria Naylor Pen Names Galore 264 Donald E. Westlake Summer Lite 270 Barbara Mertz Contents xi PART FIVE: FACING THE FACTS History Is Their Beat: The New Journalist Historians 279 David Halberstam A Novel Approach to Reality: Basing a Story in Facts 289 Dominick Dunne Making the Truth Believable 297 Tracy Kidder Describing the World As It Is, Not As It Would Be 304 CarlSagan The Political Memoir: Taking Note of History 312 GeorgeP. Shultz President in Search of a Publisher 322 Jimmy Carter Biographer, Get a Life 330 Stacy Schiff From the Clinic 338 Kay Redfield Jamison Notes from the Road 344 Jonathan Raban Natural Selections 351 E. O. Wilson xii Contents Speaking Up for the Environment 359 BillMcKibben PART SIX: LOOKING BACK The Trouble with Finishing 367 Frances FitzGerald The Hardest Critics 373 Carol Shields Literary Executions 380 Julian Barnes Taking It All Back 387 Jane Smiley Writer, Be Afraid 393 Michael Chabon In Search of the Next Idea 399 Wardjust.