Amazon.com (ISBN 0811814815, Cards)

The Observation Deck is kind of like an I Ching for writers. At an impasse in your essay or novel? Looking for a new approach or even merely a warm-up exercise? Simply pluck a card from the deck, refer to the appropriate section in the accompanying book, and go with it. Each card--there are 50--is accompanied by a meditation on its subject by Naomi Epel, whose own warm wisdom is supplemented by that of the hundreds of writers she has met in her role as a book-tour escort in San Francisco. For the card labeled "Get specific," for example, Epel calls upon eight writers in the space of a two-and-a-half-page rally against the vague and superficial. Among them is Gabriel García Márquez, who advises, "If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants in the sky, people probably will believe you." --Jane Steinberg