Drawing back the curtain on the process of writing novels, The Secret Miracle brings together well-known practitioners of the craft to discuss how they write. Paul Auster, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Minot, Rick Moody, Haruki Murakami, George Pelecanos, Gary Shteyngart, and others take readers step by step through the alchemy of writing fiction, answering everything from nuts-and-bolts queries—“Do you outline?”—to questions posed by writers and readers alike: “What makes a character compelling?”
