The story behind the writing of the best-selling Blue Highways is as fascinating as the epic trip itself. More than 30 years after his 14,000-mile, 38-state journey, William Least Heat-Moon reflects on the four years he spent capturing the lessons of the road trip on paper - the stops and starts in his composition process, the numerous drafts and painstaking revisions, the depressing string of rejections by publishers, the strains on his personal relationships, and many other aspects of the toil that went into writing his first book.

Along the way, he traces the hard lessons learned and offers guidance to aspiring and experienced writers alike. Far from being a technical manual, Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened is an adventure story of its own. It's a journey of “exploration into the myriad routes of heart and mind that led to the making of a book from the first sorry and now vanished paragraph to the last words that came not from a graphite pencil, but from a letterpress in Tennessee.”

The book is published by University of Missouri Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"An instructive, affirming look at the arduous and sometimes magical process by which an idea becomes a book." (Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer)

"Heat-Moon again proves an expert and companionable guide." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

"It's fascinating, informative, and flat-out fun." (Ned Stuckey-French, author of The American Essay in the American Century)