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.)

Here we are with More Techniques from Erle Stanley Gardner. We’re tackling Gardner’s solutions for Writer’s Block.

Look to the Show Notes for information about the nonfiction book that is the source for this information.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction
• 01:11 Unmentioned Unmentionable
• 01:54 Notes & Rules on Work
• 07:30 Plotting Machines
• 12:20 Gardner, THE Plotting Machine
• 15:16 Flying Buttresses against Writer’s Block
• 17:10 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time :: 19:17

LINKS

Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer: the Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner. Francis L. and Roberta B. Fugate. Graymalki Media, 1975.

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.)

• 66,000 words per week
• 140 titles published ~ novels and short stories.
  • Of that number, 100 of them sold over one million copies EACH.
• Translated into dozens of languages
• Used pen names because he was so prolific he had to disguise his output from editors

Who is this great Defeater of Writer’s Block? Let’s try one more clue.

• 271 TV episodes produced with his trademark character Perry Mason.

Have you guessed the writer? Erle Stanley Gardner.

To write 66,000 words each week and to publish 140 titles, Gardner had to have methods and techniques to Defeat Writer’s Block.

In his early days, before he became best-selling, Gardner had to learn story-telling techniques, all the craft skills of character, plot, conflict, and resolution (endings). He discovered practical methods and adapted them, and those served him well over his long career as a professional writer.

Let’s analyze the ones we can adapt to super-charge our own Write Focus.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction
• 03:08 Writing Life Work Habits
• 04:38 Gardner’s 1st Technique
• 07:48 His 2nd Technique
• 09:05 His 3rd Technique (& the most important)
• 10:30 Two Touchstones for Stories
• 13:40 These Touchstones Defeat Writer’s Block
• 15:03 Five Guides for any Story
• 20:05 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time :: 22:48

LINKS

Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer: the Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner. Francis L. and Roberta B. Fugate. Graymalki Media, 1975.

Lester Dent’s Plot Formula (1st episode) Audio https://eden5695.podbean.com/e/322-short-narratives-part-1-mixed-miscellany-summer-series/?token=787f587776d16329864e1540c7138c9e

Video on YouTube https://youtu.be/jA6xHr44XMw

Lester Dent’s Plot Formula / printable pdf / https://mgherron.com/2015/01/lester-dents-pulp-paper-master-fiction-plot-formula/

Plot 7 (1st episode) Audio https://eden5695.podbean.com/e/504-plot-7-part-a-discovering-plot/

Archetypal Story Pattern / Greatest Plot Structure in the World (1st episode) Audio https://eden5695.podbean.com/e/stages-1-2-greatest-plot-structure-discplot-447/?token=1f886de066cbc760395ba4fc6edb7519

Link to Blog https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/03/defeat-writers-block-how-one-pro-won.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 back with more advice from Pro Writers on Defeating Writer’s Block.

Let’s launch straight into business.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction
• 00:48 Barbara Kingsolver
• 03:00 William Stafford (poet)
• 03:51 Scott McCormick
• 09:16 Philip Pullman
• 12:06 Charlaine Harris
• 14:34 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time:: 16:40

Links

None. Quotations came from a variety of internet sites.

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.)