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Written by one of the pioneers of the process-writing approach, the seventh edition of Donald Murray's brief rhetoric continues to help students find their own style of writing.

How do creative people think? Do great works of the imagination originate in words or in images? Is there a rational explanation for the sudden appearance of geniuses like Mozart or Einstein? Such questions have fascinated people for centuries; only in recent years, however, has cognitive psychology been able to provide some clues to the mysterious process of creativity. In this revised edition of Notebooks of the Mind, Vera John-Steiner combines imaginative insight with scientific precision to produce a startling account of the human mind working at its highest potential. To approach her subject John-Steiner goes directly to the source, assembling the thoughts of experienced thinkers-artists, philosophers, writers, and scientists able to reflect on their own imaginative patterns. More than fifty interviews (with figures ranging from Jessica Mitford to Aaron Copland), along with excerpts from the diaries, letters, and autobiographies of such gifted giants as Leo Tolstoy, Marie Curie, and Diego Rivera, among others, provide illuminating insights into creative activity. We read, for example, of Darwin's preoccupation with the image of nature as a branched tree while working on his concept of evolution. Mozart testifies to the vital influence on his mature art of the wondrous bag of memories he retained from childhood. Anais Nin describes her sense of words as oppressive, explaining how imagistic free association freed her as a writer. Adding these personal accounts to laboratory studies of thought process, John-Steiner takes a refreshingly holistic approach to the question of creativity. What emerges is an intriguing demonstration of how specific socio-cultural circumstances interact with certain personality traits to encourage the creative mind. Among the topics examined here are the importance of childhood mentor figures; the lengthy apprenticeship of the talented person; and the development of self- expression through highly individualistic languages, whether in images, movement or inner speech. Now, with a new introduction, this award-winning book provides an uniquely broad-based study of the origins, development and fruits of human inspiration.

It is good form in English Department offices and corridors to grump, grouse, growl, even whine about how the is going. Such labor, such a dreary business, how grubby, how ridiculous to expect publication, as if an article could reveal the subtleties of a finely-tuned mind. The more you publish, the more tactful it is to moan and groan. The danger is that young colleagues, new to the academy, may believe us. They may think that we who publish are performing penance, obediently fulfilling a vow to publish out of fear of perishing, when this academic, and others, will slyly look around to see who is listening, then confess, writing is fun. The focus is on writing. That is where writers discover they know more than they knew they knew, where accidents of diction or syntax reveal meaning, where sentences run ahead to expose a thought. If the is done, publication-perhaps not this piece but the next or the one after that-will follow. And publishing promises a lifetime of exploration and learning, active memberhip in a scholarly community, and the opportunity for composition teachers to practice what we preach. I will share some of the methods that have helped me publish what some would say-and have said-is an excessive number of articles and books on composing processes. I do not do this to suggest that others should work as I work, but as a way to invite others who publish to reveal their own craft so those who join our profession can become productive members of it-and share the secret pleasure in which we feel but rarely admit.

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