Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury (1994)
This collection of essays gave me three gifts: confirmation that word-associative lists can be powerful creative tools; the idea that what we mean when we talk about a muse is the "subconscious" mind (so feed it well!); and a commitment to write 1,000 words every day. Partly due to its nature as a "fix-up" and partly, i think, because of Bradbury's style as an essayist, this book is repetitive. It is also unpleasantly self-congratulatory. Not that Bradbury didn't earn the right. But his kind of self-celebration strikes me as less charming than, say, Whitman's.