"In this funny and perceptive collection, novelist and essayist Robert Cohen shares his thoughts on the writing process and then puts these prescriptions into practice-from how to rant effectively as an essayist and novelist ("The Piano has been Drinking"), how to achieve your own style, naming characters (and creating them), how one manages one's own identity with being "a writer" in time and space, to the use of reference and allusion in one's work. Cohen is a deft weaver of allusion himself. In lieu of telling the reader how to master the elements of writing fiction, he shows them through the work of the writers who most influenced his own development, including Bellow, Lawrence, Chekhov, and Babel. Rooted in his own experiences, this collection of essays shows readers how to use their influences and experiences to create bold, personal, and individual work. While the first part of the book teaches writing, the essays in the second part show how these elements come together".

Robert Cohen is the author of Inspired Sleep, Amateur Barbarians, and The Varieties of Romantic Experience, among other works of fiction. His honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches at Middlebury College, and has previously taught fiction at Harvard, the Iowa Writers Workshop, the Bread Loaf Conference, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.