Lord knows there are enough “how-to” books out there to drive a person crazy. Time magazine has damn near made an industry out of it.

Need to know how to weatherproof your porch or grout the tub? Just call the friendly Time-Life operator and the step by step instructions will be sent to your door for the low, low price of $19.95.

And just like every other craft in the world, there are manuals out there that can instruct writers how to create that perfect New York Times bestseller.

But think about this, potential authors. Did Fitzgerald, Steinbeck or Hemingway have a copy of “Fiction for Dummies” next to their typewriters? Doubt it.

What they did have was a purpose in their fiction. Maybe all a writer ever needs is a little bit of inspiration. Writers now can read up on what inspires their heroes in “Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction,” edited by Will Blythe.

Blythe held the title of literary editor at Esquire and is now a contributing editor to Harper’s and Mirabella. He decided to compile this book simply because of his love for the craft of fiction. He writes, “…This book is about the happiness of writing, about writing as an antidote to boredom and monotony and uniformity.”

And who better to write about the happiness of fiction than 26 accomplished fiction writers, including well-known names such as Norman Mailer and Terry McMillan?

Some authors write long-winded stories which read like fiction themselves; others just write in rambling sentence fragments, wanting only to tell you why they love what they do for a living.

Blythe writes, “The accounts here evoke the strange miracle — and miracle is not too strong a word — through which fiction is conjured into being.”

Tom Chiarella sees writing not so much as a miracle or a survival tool. He doesn’t love to write — in fact he almost struggles to pick up the pen — but he can’t stop. He writes, “It is the most lonely industry. Alone. Crouched. Slouched. Slogging. I write with my own self, no one else … But I write to collect the world. Otherwise I stumble through it, nothing more.”

Unlike Chiarella, McMillan enjoys the loneliness in writing. She uses her characters to look inward at herself. “I become my own therapist,” she writes, “Because nobody knows me better than me, and if I do my job, I can ease my heart inside another character’s until I feel what he or she feels and think the way he or she thinks.”

Judging “Why I Write” by its cover, it’s not a book that screams, “look at me!” But the anecdotes between the covers are enough to convince even the most unimaginative to pick up a pen and see what they can do with it.

It is something generations of writers can use, something to make them feel as if there’s a purpose to the day-in and day-out struggle of putting their minds on paper.

Blythe advises, “Forget the how-to manuals; assembled within this book are the real methods, the genuine genealogies of creation; this is the real story of writing. Writers can get where they’re going by just about any route — over land, underground, through the air, in their dreams. The way is open.”

4 Stars