Both practicing and would-be writers are endlessly fascinated by what other writers have to say about the demands of their craft and their own methods of writing. In Shoptalk, Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Murray has collected quotations from over 450 classic and contemporary writers that reveal the myriad stages writers pass through to completion of a work. But this is more than a book of quotations; Murray has organized the writers' testimony into sixteen thematic categories and provided introductory essays that offer his own point of view and experiences to give direction and framework to the collection.