THE NEW WRITER’S HANDBOOK 2007 is the start of a yearly series of volumes to help the novice writer. There are plenty of essays on how to write, how to revise, how to find an agent, how to get published, and what to do after you get published. Contributors include Barry Lopez, Richard Powers, Jane Yolen, Ridley Pearson, and William G. Tapply among others. And I really liked the introduction to this volume written by the irrepressible Erica Jong. It begins with a quote from George Orwell: “All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing unless driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” Orwell nails it.