Wall Street Journal

July 27, 2001

It is summer. It is hot. Going to the office is oppressive. But it was oppressive even when the weather was cool.

While this sounds way too easy -- no fuss, no absinthe, no Lost Generation -- it's the expert opinion of "The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile," an offering from bookstore shelves crammed with what are known as writing-for-publication manuals. There are magazines devoted to such instruction, too, and lots fancy courses at expensive colleges. But books capture the whole culture of writerly aspiration with a bluntness that even Mickey Spillane might envy.