The Write Focus

Welcome to our 1^st Check-in for this Summer Writing Challenge, tracking not only words but also other tasks that a writer needs to pursue success. We began tracking on June 1, and we’ll continue to July 31.

As part of my Master Plan, I have three projects.

• Turning the Defeat Writer’s Block series into audiobook, ebook, and paperback.
• A massive project writing five short story, creating audiofiles for 15 stories, and publishing the 5-story collection and the 15-stoory bundle in ebook, paperback, and audiobook.
• All the miscellaneous tasks that writers do, including this podcast

The check-ins will list what occurred with the projects as well as classifying them as successes or failures.

We’ll conclude with five minutes or so of inspirational musings on writing.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 1^st Check-in
• 06:50 Be a Writer
• 07:35 Step 1
• 08:14 Step 2
• 09:28 Step 3
• 11:55 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 13:51

 

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 the Summer Writing Challenge.

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.)

All through June and July, The Write Focus turns its lens to the Summer Writing Challenge, 61 days of writing as well as presenting all the other tasks that writers should be doing in their writing business.

In addition to tracking our progress on writing projects, we’ll cover market copy, cover designers, promotional posts, and newsletters as well as audio projects. These are just a sample of the myriad additional tasks performed by every writer, indie or traditionally published.

Podcast posts covering the previous week’s work will be recorded on Tuesday evenings for publishing on Wednesday mornings.

Join us as we detail the accomplishments and failures for every writer’s Summer Challenge.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Opening
• 01:35 Raison d’Etre / Introduction
• 04:15 Project 1
• 04:55 Project 2
• 07:05 Project 3
• 07:55 Prep Work
• 11:26 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time :: 12:26

 

Blog Site Link https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/05/summer-writing-challenge-introduction.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 the Summer Writing Challenge.

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.)

This year and the next are celebratory years for me. I began publishing in 2015 and podcasting in 2020 (yes, that coronacoaster year). It’s time for a retrospective, totting up the gains, cringing at the worst failures (some of which will never see the light of day), and dwelling on the chief lessons. You know, what I do wish that I’d known before launching into the ocean realm of writing.

The ocean of writing is a great metaphor. Writing has depths that no one will ever reach. Each writer is a tiny ship surging through the billowing waves. We dwell on the surface with only forays into the upper levels.

Where does this Writing Retrospective begin? Before publication, where all writing begins. We’ll also look at where my arrogant brain tried to take me in 2021, and finally a mistake that I keep making and having to re-learn. Geez, I know I’m slow, but still.

So, herewith, a Retrospective of Writing Regrets.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction
• 02:02 Regret 1
• 06:11 Regret 2
• 10:17 Regret 3
• 13:05 Final Words
• 14:11 Closing

Total Run Time :: 15:12

 

All Original Content / No AI Used

 

Link to Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/05/wish-id-known-writing-retrospective.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 don’t often take the time to look back, to do a retrospection. We track our accomplishments and diligently write down the small steps that take us to our short-term goals and on to our long-term ones.

If we’re good little bunnies, we check our Master Plan once a year and rewrite it every third or fifth or seventh year. I can’t imagine a 10-year Master Plan. I had to drop back from five to three because my plans change so much. I get new information. I clarify my goals I shove things forward that I wasn’t able to accomplish when I first envisioned them through rosy-colored glasses.

Even so—when we do stop and look back, we should consider all we’ve gained, all we’ve learned, and share that with others. Advice along the lines of “Wish I’d Known”.

Let’s start this two-episode Retrospective with Podcasting, especially since many people are exploring podcasting as a new endeavor They’ve leapened into TikTok and Instagram, and now they’re contemplating the longer format of podcasting.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome

00:40 Introduction

02:20 Podcast Retrospective

04:25 Podcast Decisions

06:25 Minor Wishes 1 & 2

07:40 Minor Wish 3

10:10 Major Wishes 1 & 2

12:35 Major Wish 3

14:15 Major Wish 4 & 5

15:28 Final Greatest Wish (8 total)

15:58 Closing

Total Run Time = 16:59

 

All Original Content / No AI Used

 

Link to Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/05/wish-id-known-podcast-retrospective.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 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 5^th Mistake to Avoid
• 07:25 Her 21^st 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.)