“Maisel has a won­der­ful voice and A Writer’s San Fran­cisco reads like a gritty, flu­ent love let­ter. He moves seam­lessly between thought­ful descrip­tions of mod­ern San Fran­cisco and the San Fran­cisco of the ‘60s and ‘70s in nar­ra­tives that bring the city alive on the page. His affec­tion and respect for the city are inspir­ing to all writ­ers and artists, but also to any­one who has ever spent time in San Fran­cisco and fallen in love with her.” – Chris DeLorenzo, Laguna Writ­ers Workshops

“From Bernal Hill to Wash­ing­ton Square Park, Alca­traz Island to the West Por­tal Tun­nel, Eric Maisel has trav­eled phys­i­cally and metaphor­i­cally, and in this beau­ti­ful new book, he gives the reader a guided tour of heart, soul, and place.

“The phys­i­cal book is stun­ningly beau­ti­ful. Paul Madonna’s col­or­ful draw­ings of build­ings, streets, inte­ri­ors, and still-life scenes add amaz­ing depth to the nar­ra­tive. A cen­ter fold­out shows a typ­i­cally hilly San Fran­cisco street full of nar­row houses and flats with a view to the Golden Gate Bridge. Quo­ta­tions by Imo­gen Cun­ning­ham, Dylan Thomas, Mark, Twain, and Oscar Wilde on the reverse side attest to the strength and attrac­tions of the city.

“Those who have fol­lowed Maisel’s career, read his books on writ­ing, received his fre­quent newslet­ters, and par­tic­i­pated in his cre­ativ­ity work­shops will be fur­ther entranced by this book of reflec­tions, mem­o­ries, and wise obser­va­tions, but any author or artist who has fallen in love with a city — or, indeed, any place — will find this ‘Guided Jour­ney of the Cre­ative Soul’ irre­sistible. Highly rec­om­mended. ~Lori L. Lake, Mid­west Book Review

“Eric Maisel, described by his pub­lisher as ‘America’s fore­most cre­ativ­ity coach’ has writ­ten this delight­ful lit­tle book with, it seems, two types of read­ers in mind. The first is the per­son who knows and loves the city of San Fran­cisco, and the sec­ond is the writer — or would-be writer — seek­ing to access their innate cre­ativ­ity and con­quer writ­ers’ block. The thirty indi­vid­ual short essays pro­file ‘inspir­ing writ­ing loca­tions’ in the San Fran­cisco area, a smat­ter­ing of lit­er­ary his­tory, and tips and strate­gies to ‘inspire writ­ers to write’. I con­fess that the notion of a ‘cre­ativ­ity coach’ did inspire some ‘only in Amer­ica’ mus­ings in this reader, but I was quickly won over by the author’s warm, friendly tone and his tru­isms about the cre­ative process that per­me­ate the entire text.

“In fact, I haven’t enjoyed a book on writ­ing this much since encoun­ter­ing Stephen King’s On Writ­ing some years ago. When I got to the end of A Writer’s San Fran­cisco, I actu­ally felt com­pelled to go back to the begin­ning and reread it imme­di­ately, such is its charm and inspi­ra­tional qual­i­ties. Along with the author’s own mus­ings on the lit­er­ary (and his own per­sonal) his­tory with var­i­ous sites around the city — includ­ing the Golden Gate Bridge, the famed City Lights Book­store and the Bernal Heights area — the text is laden with help­ful apho­risms for the cre­ative soul who feels ‘stuck’. Quotable pas­sages abound. This, for exam­ple: ‘Nature gives us thirty years or a hun­dred, a quill pen or its equiv­a­lent, and odd thoughts that need to set­tle on paper or else turn to dust’ (p.4).

“In dis­cussing the city’s demo­graph­ics, Maisel writes that San Fran­cisco — like Paris — ‘is an impor­tant, well-marked stop on the bohemian inter­na­tional high­way’, and cites the city’s rich his­tory, from the bohemian enclaves of the 1890s, to the rise of the Beat poets, to the Sum­mer of Love, as proof of his claim that San Fran­cisco is home to more intel­li­gent, thought­ful, cre­ative and non-conformist peo­ple than just about any other city in the US, a fact made all the more remark­able given the small size of the city (46.7 square miles), com­pared with, for exam­ple, Los Ange­les (469 square miles) or Hous­ton (579 square miles). The effect of this is that ‘smart peo­ple with ideas are crammed together and stand in line at the same cafes, go to the same out­door film fes­ti­vals, … shop at the same farm­ers’ mar­kets, and fre­quent the same bars’ (p.46). Essen­tially, Maisel’s advice to the writer is that this city is a true ‘home’ for the cre­ative soul, and that its bohemian qual­i­ties cre­ate inspi­ra­tion and a sense of con­ti­nu­ity with the fam­ily of cre­ative humanity.

“Maisel also gets down to the nitty gritty of look­ing at the kinds of peo­ple that become writ­ers. He gives the reader per­mis­sion to embrace their writerly self, with all its bizarre appetites and creep­ing para­noias. Some more quotable quotes: ‘There are rea­sons why writ­ers who write a lot, as Rud­yard (Kipling) did, have big appetites. They are danc­ing bun­dles of desire. Writ­ers who write crave sex, peanuts, and Nobel Prizes. They crave; they itch; they lust; they are alive. Whether they man­age this mélange of desires well is a sep­a­rate mat­ter. But with­out this danc­ing, press­ing desire they would sit qui­etly like old folks lined up in the cor­ri­dor of a nurs­ing home. Honor your goal to cre­ate a world by burn­ing with desire. Be incan­des­cent — or noth­ing will hap­pen’ (p.88).

“Maisel even has prac­ti­cal advice for the stay-at-home par­ent writer about how to find the time to write while keep­ing the kids super­vised and occu­pied. He points out that the writer who has no time to write will be mis­er­able, and this in turn will make his or her fam­ily mis­er­able. ‘Writ­ing is a writer’s prime par­ent­ing skill. If you don’t write, you get sad, angry, unhinged, gloomy, pes­simistic, and morose. By writ­ing first thing in the morn­ing, as your chil­dren play or tod­dle off to school, you put your­self in the mood to smile at them when next you see them. Writ­ing is a tonic, an elixir, even if it goes badly, because even if it goes badly at least you have been writ­ing’ (p.92).

“All writ­ers instinc­tu­ally know these things, but it’s ter­rific to see it all laid out in black and white by a ‘suc­cess­ful’ writer, who openly con­fesses to the same dif­fi­cul­ties and anx­i­eties as the novice. Maisel’s text makes one want to write, and to write bet­ter, more con­sis­tently, more reli­giously. In acknowl­edg­ing the free, non­con­formist nature of the cre­ative soul, Maisel helps the reader give them­selves per­mis­sion to cre­ate, and to cre­ate abundantly.

“Each chap­ter of the book is pref­aced by one of Paul Madonna’s lovely draw­ings of var­i­ous aspects of the city, cov­er­ing not only archi­tec­ture, but also odd views of back alleys, old cars, artist’s stu­dios, roof gables, and webs of elec­tri­cal and trol­ley car wires, all of which com­mu­ni­cate the city’s unique charm. I’ve never been to San Fran­cisco — although, like most west­ern writ­ers I’ve always been aware of it as a kind of Shangri-La — but after read­ing this I feel I know the city bet­ter and, more impor­tantly, can find ways to har­ness the type of energy Maisel claims San Fran­cisco emanates for my own cre­ative pur­poses.”—Liz Hall-Gowns, The Com­pul­sive Reader

“What makes San Fran­cisco spe­cial for writ­ers? Eric Maisel may have a few answers. In A Writer’s San Fran­cisco, Maisel, a writer, ther­a­pist and cre­ativ­ity coach, dis­cusses the lure of San Fran­cisco for writ­ers and artists who don’t feel quite at home any­where else — with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Paris.

“In this slim vol­ume of beautifully-crafted essays, Maisel cov­ers both the obvi­ous writer high­lights — City Lights Book­store and the bohemian charm of North Beach — and the not so obvi­ous facts — for exam­ple, that San Fran­cisco has a highly-educated work­force, sec­ond only to that of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. As he puts it, “This pas­sion­ate, edu­cated, eclec­tic, dreamy, hard­work­ing, half-disillusioned, half-manic brain trust wan­ders this hilly town and, like the fog, seeps into its bistros, its Mys­tery Book­store, its leather bars, every­where.” The city is also some­where between 10 and 20 per­cent gay, and Maisel fur­ther notes that “gay towns are cre­ative towns.”

“Alto­gether, the unusual mix that is San Fran­cisco — artists, cre­atives, gays, Asians, Lati­nos and many oth­ers — cre­ates a dis­tinctly tol­er­ant, some­times rad­i­cally open soci­ety. As much as it is about San Fran­cisco, A Writer’s San Fran­cisco is also about the writ­ing life in gen­eral — in par­tic­u­lar, the writer’s often­times dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with the world. Maisel talks about the details of being a work­ing writer with great hon­esty: for exam­ple, work­ing on a book he knew wasn’t turn­ing out well (and being less than forth­com­ing about it to his edi­tor), jeal­ousy of other writ­ers’ suc­cess, and sim­i­lar issues. He describes the writer’s odd pas­sion for sit­ting in cafes to write, includ­ing an amus­ing story about his “dop­pel­ganger,” a fel­low writer that he saw at his cafe every day. The two writ­ers never spoke to each other, even when forced to share a table when the cafe was full. Maisel later dis­cov­ers that his dop­pel­ganger is a suc­cess­ful pub­lished author, and he muses over the dif­fer­ence between the two of them, who were at the cafe to actu­ally work, and the rather more dilet­tan­tish “writ­ers” who fre­quented the cafe.

“And encom­pass­ing all of this is the city itself — San Fran­cisco — a cool, serene muse, whose beauty not only inspires but sup­ports all of its cre­ative chil­dren. Maisel isn’t objec­tive about his city and doesn’t pre­tend to be. Tourists come to San Fran­cisco, he says, because ‘the heart needs a break from its every­day aching’ and the scenic beauty of the city’s water­front and its arti­ness are balms for the soul.

“As Maisel puts it, there’s a ‘bohemian inter­na­tional high­way’ and San Fran­cisco is one of its well-established rest stops. Writ­ers every­where sense that San Fran­cisco is one of their nat­ural native grounds, a place where free­dom and cre­ation can blend together. It’s a place that some of them do, and many of them want to, call home. Note: A Writer’s San Fran­cisco is beau­ti­fully illus­trated by Paul Madonna, a San Fran­cisco local artist, car­toon­ist for the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle and cre­ator of the “All Over Cof­fee” comic series.– FUJOSHICAT

“I have never been to San Fran­cisco but now I know I’d like to. I can’t imag­ine a mere travel guide hav­ing this impact but Eric Maisel’s warm and lovely book makes me want to save those pen­nies and book the first flight that’ll take me!

“Eric Maisel, for those not in the know, is a psy­chother­a­pist who spe­cial­izes in cre­ativ­ity coach­ing. Any kind of cre­ativ­ity, though he is a writer him­self. He comes over as deeply humane and great fun, and there isn’t any psy­chob­a­b­ble or any other form of waf­fle in the whole book (or in any oth­ers he has writ­ten, for that mat­ter.) The book is divided up into lit­tle pieces (“essays” sounds a bit dry, which these are not) and in each one he uses a par­tic­u­lar locale or aspect of San Fran­cisco as a launch-pad for reflec­tions on such things as: how to deal with the frus­tra­tion of see­ing other writ­ers clinch deals when you have not; how to be a decent par­ent as well as a writer; the respon­si­bil­ity of the writer to be an eth­i­cal human being, not just a pro­ducer of fine writ­ing. For these rea­sons, it is per­fectly pos­si­ble to read this book even if you have never stepped foot in San Francisco.

“HOWEVER, the book is also very much a love-poem to the city. Why does Maisel love it? Partly because it’s home. Partly because it is multi-racial and multi-cultural and has a vibrant book scene and great cafes and a good cli­mate … and is also a city well known for its gen­uine tol­er­ance of every­thing bohemian, every­thing arty. True, it is in an earth­quake zone, but Maisel actu­ally finds this help­ful as a metaphor for the writ­ing life. Frankly, it would make me a just a teeny bit anx­ious. But prob­a­bly not enough to not go. San Fran­cisco is joie de vivre and good cof­fee and plenty of places for walk­ing and writ­ing and just being.

“Maisel indi­cates at one point in this book that ‘one day’ he will have to write a writer’s guide to New York. Look­ing for­ward to that … In the mean­time, this will keep me busy. And his excel­lent and evoca­tive “Writer’s Guide to Paris”. Oh, and writ­ing.”—Ilonacat

“I opened the book ran­domly to page 33, where the first line of the chap­ter read, “For a year I dated a schiz­o­phrenic poet– let’s call her Carol.”

“This is a travel guide?!

“This essay was about a woman who hal­lu­ci­nated roses and poked strangers in the midriff and ended up insti­tu­tion­al­ized for some time, but who also wrote and recited poetry when she was “sane.’ And at one read­ing, a woman came up to her and said, ‘You are a real poet.’ It’s the val­i­da­tion every writer craves, and it’s the theme of this essay. Sure, the set­ting is San Fran­cisco, but this is no ‘You must see this fine lit­tle café with the lovely murals’ guide.

“Hav­ing been drawn in by this essay, I flipped back to the first page and began read­ing. It’s even more of a niche book than I imag­ined. It’s writ­ten for non­re­li­gious Demo­c­rat nov­el­ists who con­sider them­selves ‘artists’ and love San Fran­cisco. I am pre­cisely none of these things.

“Con­sid­er­ing how far out of his tar­get mar­ket I am, I prob­a­bly shouldn’t have enjoyed this book. But I did. I enjoyed it despite want­ing to toss mack­erel at his kneecaps a few times. I enjoyed it partly because of that, maybe. What really mat­ters, above all else, is that he’s writ­ing about the lives of writ­ers. And even if I roll my eyes at the idea of ‘artistes’ in cof­fee houses, we’re going to have a lot in common.

“The expe­ri­ence of walk­ing into a book­store and find­ing out some­one else has already writ­ten the book you were plan­ning to write, for instance. Try­ing to write even through tragedy and pres­sures. Miss­ing a fab­u­lous writ­ing oppor­tu­nity because you were in the wrong place at the right time. Blow­ing your first pub­lic speak­ing engage­ment in sup­port of your book. Hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions about the mean­ings of words like ‘haberdashery.’

“There are bril­liant sen­tences and para­graphs here, things you’ll wish you wrote. There are expe­ri­ences you’ll ‘get’ even if you’ve never had them. This is part of the broth­er­hood and sis­ter­hood of writ­ers. The part that believes, regard­less of what we write and where we live and what demo­graphic boxes we check on sub­scrip­tion forms, that the mer­its of our work are still impor­tant. That those who try to belit­tle the craft should have their noses rearranged. That writ­ing mat­ters.” – Jenna Glatzer

Purchase Now