Part memoir, part literary analysis, part psychological study, this aid to the confused and weary writer sets out to explain:

1. just what the hell it is we think we are doing (Ch 1, “Orientation”),
2. the relationship between writer and reader (Ch. 5, “Nobody to Nobody”),
3. where we go and what we bring back when we are writing (Ch. 6, “Descent”), and more.

Apply liberally during bouts of existential crisis. It’s also useful as a gift to writers’ loved ones. “When she gets that faraway look, this is what’s going on in her head.”

Negotiating is notable for Atwood’s dry wit and many fun leaps of the imagination. One of my favorite bits is the list she compiled of reasons writers have given for becoming writers. It’s telling, I guess, that the only one I can ever consistently remember is “To show the bastards.” There are two full pages more where that came from, though, and it’s a fairly comprehensive list. Atwood determined that there was no “common clutch” of motivations, and abandoned the attempt to systematize on that front.

But she spends a lot of time dealing with how one experiences what one is doing when one is writing, thinking about writing, revising, and reading, which is comforting. That’s how I experienced the book: comforting. I may be a bit freakish, but I’m not the only one!

Atwood is good at spinning engaging hypotheses and making lots of imaginative leaps (but with pretty good logic underpinning most of them).  She explores many metaphoric roles that other writers have either tried on or had forcibly applied in the past (writer as priest, writer as murderous twin/uncanny double, writer as hero venturing into the underworld — also, especially for the girls, writer as grim virgin or blood-drinking dark priestess), and pokes at them to see what insight they yield about this whole shady enterprise.

I find some of her experiences, especially having to do with being a woman and a writer, are vastly different from my own, because of differences in generation, geography, upbringing, and personality. For the most part, I’m very happy about that; I think women writers of my generation have it much easier in many ways than hers.

Even if you don’t find Atwood’s metaphors completely relevant to your immediate situation, her line of inquiry invites further consideration: what is it, actually, that I think I’m doing when I’m writing? Being a writer is qualitatively different from being a plumber or a cook or a kindergarten teacher, and to pretend otherwise is a distortion that doesn’t help the process (unless you’re on a deadline, when “sausage factory worker” may be exactly how you feel about what you’re doing).

One of the metaphors Atwood touches on only briefly is probably closest to my idea of the writer: the artificer. I think of a writer as a sort of optician, patiently grinding lenses and looking through them. Some are abandoned as flawed early on; the rest get perfected and polished. Each reveals different details of the surroundings, and all can betray the myopia, astigmatism (and one hopes, far-sightedness) of their creator. In each case, though, the lens-maker sets the latest project aside or puts it in a shop window for sale and starts on the next one. That one will show her everything she wanted to see.

Find Negotiating with the Dead at a nearby library or purchase it.

I’ll kick things off with the wonderfully fun Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart, featuring illustrations by Briony Morrow-Cribbs and Jonathan Rosen (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009).

Stewart’s style is entertaining and breezy, with lots of historical anecdotes thrown in (in addition to Lincoln’s mother, we learn about President James Garfield’s assassin, details of how Socrates met his end, and more) as well as some nice tidbits of science (how poison ivy, oak and sumac cause skin irritation, types of toxins found in various plants, etc., etc.).

Stewart explores plants with a wide variety of traits: some kill-on-contact deadly, some mild irritants, some useful-but-dangerous, some used recreationally by humans (several of which are also deadly, notably tobacco). It’s a beautifully designed book, and the illustrations, particularly Rosen’s cartoons, add a certain whimsy to its macabre charm.

Wicked Plants is particularly of note to writers because of its focus on plants that are poisonous and/or noxious in some way, which makes it a nice supplement to herbal guides that focus on edible and medicinal plants, or more general field guides. Murder mystery writers in particular will find much to love here.

I found the book useful for world-building in speculative fiction; my work-in-progress has some scenes outdoors in the desert and in grassland, and using a few of these plants as models made things much more interesting for my characters, who had to avoid some and use others VERY carefully.

My one criticism is that the book lacks an index; the table of contents is fairly detailed, and that helps, but it would be extremely handy to look up plants by the active toxins they contain, for instance, or the region in which they grow. Stewart does include a bibliography for further reading and a list of “poison gardens” (botanical conservatories and the like) that contain specimens of some of these deadly beauties, both useful to researchers.

The links go to Stewart’s page for the book, which I think is also notable as an example of a marketing tool for writers – many of the things she does there would work for nonfiction and fiction writers alike: http://www.amystewart.com/wickedplants.html