The Way of the Writer by Johnson, Charles -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Dedication Introduction I. Who Is the Writer?

1. In the Beginning . . . 2. The Apprentice Novels 3. A Day in the Life 4. The Writing Space 5. The Artist as Shape-Shifter 6. The Question of Vision

II. The Process of Writing

7. A Boot Camp for Creative Writing 8. Words 9. In Defense of Our Language 10. Telling It Long and Telling It Short 11. Opening Sentences: A Hundred Rays of Light 12. On Craft and Revision 13. The Challenge of Voice 14. How We Sound 15. Nature Gives Us No Metaphors 16. Scene and Dialogue 17. The Importance of Plot 18. Storytelling and the Alpha Narrative 19. On the Novel and Short Story 20. The Essay 21. The Risks We Take

III. What Helps the Writer?

22. On Teachers and Mentors 23. The Wounds That Create Our Work 24. The First Readers 25. Writers and Editors 26. On Reading 27. The Virtues of Journalism 28. Practical Literary Advice

IV. The Writer as Teacher

V. The Writing Life and the Duties of the Writer

32. The Art of Book Reviewing 33. In Translation 34. On Screenwriting 35. Editing and Small Presses

VI. Philosophy and the Writer

36. Writing Well Is Thinking Well 37. The Writer and Philosophy 38. Fiction and the Liberation of Perception 39. New Fiction Novelists 40. Science Fiction and the Philosophical Novel 41. Sartre and the Nothingness of Being 42. The Truth-Telling Power of Fiction

Afterword: Notes from a Former Student by Marc C. Conner Acknowledgments About Charles Johnson Copyright