The Write Focus M.A. Lee

A handful of years ago, after I had started publishing, I stumbled across Phyllis A. Whitney’s Guide to Fiction Writing.

Originally published in 1982, that date was 6 years before the Mystery Writers of America gave her a Grand Master award for Lifetime Achievement and 8 years before a similar award came from the Romance Writers of America.

When she died in 2008, Whitney had published more than 70 novels, mostly for adults but a few for young teenagers were also in that total. Whitney has also been described as an inspiration for the founding of the Sisters in Crime organization. There’s a whole back story to that; needless to say, MWA and the reviewers and more were giving scant attention to women writers in the mystery field.

Many current writers decry Whitney as “Old School”. Indeed, the writers that I’ve focused on for this series on Defeating Writer’s Block—Gardner and Delton, Stewart and Whitney—have done what current names in the publishing business have not. They have numerous published works which have endured past their writing lives.

They are all “Old School”. Paper-based. With writer’s notebooks in binders and journals rather than software apps.

But their advice is highly valuable to us, for we want they achieved: long-term writing success that didn’t succumb to Writer’s Block.

And Whitney gives us the largest and strongest and final key to Defeating Writer’s Block.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome
00:40 Introduction
02:30 Old School Writers vs. New School Ones
06:48 Viewing Our Writing Selves
11:00 Scheduling
15:43 Growing the Story
18:34 Sparking New Ideas
24:55 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 26:23

SOURCE

Whitney, Phyllis A. Guide to Fiction Writing. The Writer, Inc. Publishers, 1982. https://www.amazon.com/Guide-fiction-writing-Phyllis-Whitney/dp/087116129X/


Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/05/defeat-writers-block-whitneys-solutions.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Defeat Writer’s Block, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Think like a Pro: a New Advent for Writers.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

We’re approaching the finale of our examination of Writers Defeating Writer’s Block.

We’ve diagnosed the three major issues, how to recognize them, and how to resolve them to return to writing.

We’ve examined advice from 10 different writers, from Neil Gaiman to Barbara Kingsolver, Charlaine Harris to Philip Pullman.

We delved deeply into famous blockbuster Erle Stanley Gardner’s techniques as he dealt with the unmentioned unmentionable.

Mary Stewart revealed the writer’s life in her short novel The Stormy Petrel, and we analyzed Stewart’s covert and overt advice for writers.

The great storyteller / story teacher Kate Wilhelm wrote of her writing world in her writing memoir Storyteller, and we barely skimmed the surface of all she had to impart.

Now we’ve reached an odd little book—inspiration and musings, advice and commentary, compiled into For Writers Only by Sophy Burnham. Novelist, journalist, playwright, and nonfiction writer, Burnham describes her book as a “patchwork quilt about my craft”, collected over the years by her, her friends, and her editors.

I like this book for its various chapters, some not surprising, some very surprising. She has such chapter titles as Starting, How, Where, Letting Go, Productivity, Rewriting, one chapter entitled Waiting Spinning Drifting, another on jealousy, yet another on Aloneness, for writing is a lonely occupation.

And then we have the chapter on Writer’s Block.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome
00:40 Introduction to the Book
04:27 Introduction to the Chapter
06:15 The Infectious Block
07:53 Be in the Story
10:59 The Frustration
15:23 The Other Side
20:00 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 22:09


LINKS and MORE

Burnham, Sophy. For Writers Only. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.

Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/05/defeat-writers-block-burnham-talks.html


Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Defeat Writer’s Block, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Think like a Pro: a New Advent for Writers.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

Many writers—newbies, early wannabees, flash-ins before they flash out—many of these writers never reach the mature writer’s self-analysis stage.
These writers don’t learn to seek new methods when the story won’t flow.
They don’t seek solutions to plot conundrums and character rebellions.
They don’t analyze their writing blocks and seek ways around or over or under or through that writer’s block.
Some mature writers don’t do this, either. They stop and wait. For what? Inspiration? The spark of the start of the way out? They should be scaling the problem or dodging it with another project or tunneling to discover a deeper issue with the story or blasting through the Block with fire and passion for writing.
We don’t want to confront Writer’s Block. We shrink away, frightened by its lingering. The great unmentioned unmentionable seeks to rule us—will we let it?
Not if we have sense. Not if we have a juggernaut of ideas barreling into us, desperate to be released into stories.
Newbie or Mature writer, we do stumble into problems. And then we seek advice from other storytellers.
Let’s look at advice from another Storyteller who is also a Story Teacher.
TIMINGS
00:00 Welcome
00:40 Introduction
02:10 Wilhelm’s Background
03:04 Disruptions
08:00 Imposter Syndrome
14:22 Slump vs. Block
18:20 Silent Partner
23:03 Last Words / Closing
Total Run Time :: 25:09
 
SOURCE
Wilhelm, Kate. Storyteller. Northampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2005. info@smallbeerpress.com
 
Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/04/defeat-writers-block-kate-wilhelm.html
 
Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.
Our current focus is Defeat Writer’s Block, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Think like a Pro: a New Advent for Writers.
Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr
You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.
For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .
Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.
If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

A funny thing happened on the way through entertainment this past weekend. I read Mary Stewart’s The Stormy Petrel. That’s not the funny thing.

Mary Stewart is my all-time favorite author. Wonderful character development, intriguing plots, lovely lyrical writing. She’s a guaranteed satisfying entertainment. My favorite novel of hers is My Brother Michael with The Moonspinners as a close second. (If you’ve seen the film, you haven’t met Stewart’s story.)

I read The Stormy Petrel years ago. The story didn’t stick then: IDK the reason. I usually reach for something else when I want a delicious read. This past weekend was different.

And now we’re to the funny thing, for the protagonist Rose is a writer. Stewart included several revealing passages about the writer’s life including—get this—writer’s block.

Let’s examine what Stewart has to say.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome
00:40 Introduction
02:25 Spark the Start
05:12 Revive the Memory of Story
07:40 Deep into Flow
10:20 Finish that Bit; Don’t just Stop
11:17 Unfolding Inspiration
13:40 Many Projects
18:00 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time:: 20:07

SOURCE

Stewart, Mary. The Stormy Petrel. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991. https://www.amazon.com/Stormy-Petrel-Mary-Stewart-ebook/dp/B00GVFUEGS

Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/04/defeat-writers-block-m-stewart-on.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Defeat Writer’s Block, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Think like a Pro: a New Advent for Writers.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

When we’re browsing for information to help our own particular problems, we reach for the weighty titles, the ones that analyze to the nth degree and provide six or seven or thirteen examples. That kind of information scan would miss Judy Delton’s surprisingly valuable little guidebook The 29 Most Common Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

My own bookshelf, physical and electronic, is scant on information about Writer’s Block. That doesn’t mean I haven’t suffered from it, the way many writers have.

Most of my earlier years when I plunged into Writer’s Block, I denied that I had it. It was the great “unmentioned unmentionable” such as Erle Stanley Gardner must have faced. … I, too, have looked for processes to spin out a plot or delve into characters. I haven’t gone as far as to create a 15-page outline or 7 Plot Wheels. Nor have I looked for a variety of information on Writer’s Block and how to overcome it.

I’ve simply prayed for the opportunities when my writing flows out so easily and hoped, after a stoppage, that I can return to that flowing. I have learned that writing every day prevents Writer’s Block.

If we don’t admit to Writer’s Block, can we overcome it? Most of us think we can, simply by ignoring it, keeping it unmentioned and unacknowledged … at least, that’s what we think.

The real, actual, only thing that we can do to Defeat Writer’s Block is act upon our Will to Write.

I’m not certain that Judy Delton’s little guidebook can be found. It’s not from a major publisher although Writer’s Digest Books is certainly well-known. An internet search turns up cached pages offering the book at used book dealers like Thrift Books and ebay, but the first two that I clicked only catalogued the book; it wasn’t in stock.

Anyway, on to part 2 of “Avoid These Mistakes” when attempting to find the impetus to Defeat Writer’s Block.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome
00:40 Introduction
03:05 Delton’s 5th Mistake to Avoid
07:25 Her 21st Mistake to Avoid
11:07 Bridge thru Guidebook / More Advice than on Writer’s Block
17:05 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time :: 19:23


LINKS

Delton, Judy. The 29 Most Common Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Writer’s Digest Books, 1985.

Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/04/defeat-writers-block-avoid-these.html


Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Defeat Writer’s Block, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Think like a Pro: a New Advent for Writers.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

Writers read. In reading we are voracious consumers of anything that catches our eye.

We may also be hoarders, little dragons perched on a Keep-Forever Book Stack, surrounded by a myriad of smaller To-Be-Read stacks: This Stack First, This Stack Second, This Later, Helpful Stuff, I Wanna But Not Now, Maybe Later, I Dunno, and more. When we climb down from our hoard, we may stop and investigate those TBR stacks and do a little re-organizing.

And thus I found an unexpected gem which has a lot to say about Defeating Writer’s Block. The book is Judy Delton’s The 29 Most Common Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome
00:40 Introduction
04:28 Avoid Mistake #1
11:40 Avoid Mistake #2
18:25 Wilhelm’s Law of Ideas
21:00 Avoid Mistake #3
24:46 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time :: 26:52


LINKS

Delton, Judy. The 29 Most Common Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Writer’s Digest Books, 1985.

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Defeat Writer’s Block, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Think like a Pro: a New Advent for Writers.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)