In "Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing" (2002), Margaret Atwood examines the existential, often dark, and mythological dimensions of the writing life, defining authorship as a "doubleness" of personality and a "descent" into the past to retrieve stories. The work explores the writer's role as a mediator between the living and the dead, analyzing the varied motivations and inherent dualities of the craft. A detailed summary is available from SuperSummary .

Negotiating with the Dead : a writer on writing / Margaret Atwood