Walking on Alligators by Susan Shaughnessy

This is not a book you read through all at once.  Susan Shaughnessy's Walking on Alligators is a book best savored when read slowly, one essay each day.  Each meditation includes a quote by a well-known author, a short essay and a goal for your writing that day.  Topics of these meditations range from dealing with criticism to overcoming writer's block to evaluating your writing tools.

Personally, I like to flip the book open at random and read whichever ever essay comes up.  I think of it as writing karma, the universe sending my eye to the essay I happen to need that day.  Even if my opinion differs from the universe's at the time, I usually realize after some writing that the advice was what I really needed that day.