title: Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival
author: Judith Cofer
description: This is a collection of essays dealing with the challenges faced by writers, particularly women writers. While essayists and fiction writers are included, poets are emphasized. Most of the pieces were specifically written for this compilation, though some are revised or updated versions of earlier work. The editors, poets themselves, have divided the pieces into four sections. The first deals with sources of inspiration, the second with the lack of writing time, the third with handling obstacles that may interfere with writing (be they physical or emotional), and the last with family situations and their influence on output. On the whole, the essays are well written, though several in the first section ramble and could have used stronger editing. The sectional divisions seem a bit forced, as each piece stands on its own, without categorization. Best read piecemeal, all the essays will be inspiring to both active and would-be artists. Recommended for creative writing and women's studies programs.AGina Kaiser, Univ. of the Sciences in Philadelphia <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  Prologue
  
  Winter 1152
  
  "I cannot do this, my lady! I—I fear they will find us and we will both be
  killed, the babe and I!"
  
  The high thin voice belonged to a young girl of no more than fourteen summers.
  Her body was stout
  
  and tall for her age; she came from hearty peasant stock. She knelt in the
  rushes before the Lady
  
  Elaine, the woman she had served as long as she could remember.
  
  Gerda, you must!" Elaine spoke sharply, in a tone Gerda had heard but rarely.
  "If my son is to be
  
  saved, it is you who must save him. You must flee this keep and take Peter
  back to Sedgewick." Her
  
  eyes briefly sought the sunken gaze of the woman who lay abed, Lady Claire
  Chandler, but it was
  
  Gerda to whom she spoke.
  
  "We are marked, all of us here. You have seen with your own eyes the bloodlust
  of our attackers.
  
  They spare no one—not the farmer in the field, nor women or children. I prayed
  it would not come
  
  to this, but they know not yet of you or Peter."
  
  Outside in the bailey, the 