A collection of Mailer's essays on writing - its perils, its joys, its vicissitudes, its loneliness, and its celebrity. It speaks of problems of craft and plot, character, style, third person, first person and the psychology of the writer, and there are discussions of the differences and similarities between fiction and non-fiction and journalism. Mailer also writes about the pitfalls of early success - and how to cope with disastrous reviews.