The Writer's Home Companion
Subtitle: An Anthology of the World's Best Writing Advice, From Keats to Kunitz
Contributors: Joan Bolker (Editor)
Edition: 1st ed edition
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Published: May 15, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780805048933
Subjects: Reference works; Writing & editing guides; Authorship; English Composition; Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy; Reference; Composition & Creative Writing - General; Writing Skills; Reference / Writing Skills
First sentence: WHENEVER I TALK with an audience after a reading or lecture, somebody asks me, "Where do you get your ideas from?
Description: A blue-chip collection of hard-earned wisdom from some of the most respected writers of the century

Writing is a solitary sport - but none of us can do it without good company at crucial moments. This spirited collection of the most inspiring and useful essays and exercises ever produced on the craft of writing is the next vest 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 oas unusual and diverse as behaviorist B.F. Skinner's "How to Discover What You Have to Say", Brett Candiish Miller'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 Eisenbuerg's "E-Mail and the New Epistolary Age", and Nancy Mairs'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 Gain Godwin. 

For more than thirty years, Joan Bolker, Ed.D. has taught and counseled writers at Harvard, where she cofounded the Writing Center, as U. Mass, Boston, where she began The Language Place: and at Wellesley, Brandeis, and MlT, where she was a psycho-therapist and writing consultant. She has coached the authors of more than one hundred doctoral dissertations and is currently a clinical psychologist who works with many writers in her private practice.