How I Ended Up in
The Spirit of Writing
by Michael Dare

It started out as one of those standard e-mails you get: Hi, I'm Mark Robert Waldman, I'm doing a book called "The Spirit of Writing," I'd like to include something by you, we can't afford to pay but we'll send you copies, blah blah blah, heard it all before. The book sounded cool though, an anthology of "Classic and Contemporary Essays Celebrating the Writing Life." Us struggling artists are supposed to hold out for the big bucks. We're supposed to say no to these sort of things. I looked around at all the other offers I had to re-publish an obscure piece of mine from a five-year-old WGA magazine. I said yes.

My two copies just arrived. Not obscure at all. A beautiful book published by Tarcher/Putnam on the New Consciousness Reader label, edited by Mark Robert Waldman who did an amazing job.

From the back cover: "Renowned authors reflect on the joys and frustrations of the writing life. A rare glimpse into the inner world of the writer. Here is a wealth of insight on matters both practical and emotional. Mark Robert Waldman has gathered sixty essays that reveal the daily struggles--and rewards-- that novelists, journalists, poets, and other writers face. These elegant meditations offer comfort and inspiration for the countless people for whom writing is a way of life."

Open to the table of contents and you'll find "How to Write Like Tom Robbins" listed as story number nine in a long list. It's an interesting list to see yourself on: Annie Dillard, Stephen King, Henry Miller, Joseph Conrad, Sylvia Plath, Octavio Paz, Robert Pinsky, Erica Jong, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Anais Nin, and Michael Dare.

There are raves from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal up at Amazon.

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Order "The Spirit of Writing" from Amazon here.