Category: Pro Writer

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Defeat Writer’s Block

Don’t fear the great *unmentioned unmentionable* for writers. cover by Emily R. Dunn

Let’s DEFEAT WRITER’S BLOCK.

How do we defeat Writer’s Block?

  • Strategies to tackle that monster.
  • Advice from other 15 best-selling writers.
  • Detailed explanations to start doing now!

This book comes direct from The Write Focus podcast and its host M.A. Lee.

Suffering every writer’s serious malady of writer’s block?

We may say the mantra “Writer’s Block doesn’t exist”, but something more than simple disruptions and distractions can interfere with our writing, creating insurmountable walls.

The Write Focus analyzes the three most common types and offers solutions to Overcome and Defeat this monster looming over the writer’s desk.

The best solution, though, is Leo Tolstoy’s mantra: No days without lines :: Nulla dies sine linea. Make that your own mantra.

Published August 8.

Ebook from Worldwide Distributors like Kobo, B&N, and more:  Find it here.

Ebook and Paperback from amazing Amazon: Also on preorder, available on the 8th.

Audiobook also available (although some distributors may not have the book available for 30 days from publication. Ah well.).

Available Now: Storytel / https://www.storytel.com/se/sv/books/defeat-writers-block-think-like-a-pro-writer-6-8875896 

and Libro /  https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798988473985

Coming Soon to Apple, Audible, Chirp, Kobo, and more!

created by Emily R. Dunn
Audiobook and Ebook publishing in the Summer as part of the Summer Writing Challenge.

Chapters

  1. Introduction
  2. Overcoming Type 1: Refusal, easy to defeat
  3. Overcoming Type 2: Procrastination, difficult
  4. Overcoming Type 3: Inertia, the worst
  5. Pro Writers’ Advice, part A ~ 5 best-selling writers speak on writer’s block and how they defeated it
  6. Pro Writers’ Advice, part B ~ 6 best-sellers talk about writer’s block and strategies
  7. How One Pro Writer Defeated the Monster ~ Erle Stanley Gardner and his strategies
  8. More Techniques from Erle Stanley Gardner
  9. Avoid These Mistakes, part A ~ offered by Judy Delton
  10. Avoid These Mistakes, part B ~ more to avoid from J. Delton
  11. Mary Stewart on Writing Flow ~ shared by her in her novel The Stormy Petrel
  12. Storyteller and Story Teacher ~ Kate Wilhelm’s remembrances on writing barriers
  13. Burnham Talks Block ~ Sophie Burnham devotes a chapter to writer’s block in her book On Writing
  14. Whitney’s Solutions ~ America’s first great writer of romantic suspense, Phyllis A. Whitney shares many techniques in her book Guide to Fiction Writing

The book comes from the series of the same name on the podcast The Write Focus, hosted by M.A. Lee with the assistance of Edie Roones and Remi Black. The podcast is a presentation of Writers’ Ink Books.

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A Messy Miscellany For Writers

A Messy Miscellany for Writers is Crowded with Information.

A Messy Miscellany covers a broad range of topics on …

  • craft and process,
  • productivity and tools,
  • writing crimes to avoid,
  • the how-can’s and why-should’s of writing guidance,

and much, much more.

These miscellany chapters first appeared on The Write Focus podcast; that’s another reason for the word messy.

Miscellany: separate writings on varied subjects collected in one volume.

What makes this miscellany of writer guidance so messy?

  • A scattering into the many areas of writing, original sketch to final draft, revision to publication
  • Writing professionally, both process and attitude
  • Ways to maintain productivity and keep the writing fresh
  • Tools that writers find helpful
  • References to help writers grow
  • Writing as a long-term career
  • Necessity of promotions and marketing

Five of the chapters come from episodes in the podcast’s first year, another five from the second year, and four others began the third year.

Chapters in Messy Miscellany

Beginning to Write

01: Resolve to Be a Writer ~ Once writing becomes not only a resolution but also a devotion, what steps do we take to achieve our devotion?

02: 7 Newbie Mistakes ~ Every successful writer begins with failures. The trick is to rise above the mistakes. That takes awareness as well as solutions to overcome them.

03: 3 Notta Mistakes ~ These could easily have turned into failures. I lucked into avoiding them. Here’s the reason they’re mistakes and how we can avoid them.

04: Write the Book, part 1 ~ Every writer needs a process to achieve that first goal, a finished manuscript. Here’s guidance for the initial steps, the flailing of the middle, and how to reach the last word of our goal. (For more detailed information, please consult 12: Revision Is a Process.)

05: Write that Book, part 2 ~ What’s needed after we type the last word of our manuscript? We have three more steps to complete and plan before we send our newly finished book into the reading world. (For more detailed information, please consult 13: Edit & Correct and 14: Publish & Promo.)

General Knowledge for All Writers

06: Horror Stories for Writers ~ We’ve all heard the list of no-no’s that writers shouldn’t do. In avoiding these, we sometimes tumble into five other horrors. Here’s guidance on avoiding these career-killers and how to fix them if we stumble into their mucky mire.

07: Gifts for Writers ~ No, not sticky notes or nacky pens. The best gifts for writers touch the heart, inspire the soul, and motivate the brain. We suggest opportunities that bring beaming smiles to writers’ faces.

08: Four Recommended Books for Writers ~ These improve our writing world. Keep them as ready reference all through our writing careers.

09: Three Essential Tools for Writers ~ These don’t include writing software. Not only are these tools, but they’re also essential habits. They create long-term success and prevent stress.

10: Three Films that Writers Need to Study ~ We deal in words. Why am I recommending films? Well, films begin as words, and they’re a quicker study than novels. I present how to choose films to study then launch into my recommended three chosen for their writing craft skills and the reason those skills are important.

11: Five Writing Crimes to Avoid ~ While these aren’t potential career-killers like the five horrors, they can slow our journey to success. These are crimes we’ve all heard to avoid as well as solutions to fix them—and not once do we include the classic “Show, not tell”.

With a Finished Manuscript ~

12: Revision Is a Process ~ So many people tout revision as a key to improve a manuscript draft. Few tell us how. Revision needs a critical brain and these four major steps.

13: Edit & Correct ~ These two harsh words are often confused with revision. They’re not revision, yet they’re just as critical. Even writers unsure of grammar and punctuation as well as MS style have necessary work before sending the book into the next stage.

14: Publish & Promo ~ We’ve reached the final stage. What do we need in place before we publish? How do we plan for our promotional marketing, in amount and cost?

Work through these 14 topics of A Messy Miscellany for Writers, and be well prepared when you declare yourself “a published writer pursuing long-term success”.

~ ~ ~

A longtime tinkerer with words, M.A. Lee published her first novels in 2015 and continues to write and explore the world of writing. As of this date, under her three pen names, she has over 50 titles.

A Messy Miscellany for Writers is her ninth non-fiction book. She also has three planners for writers, each with a different focus: for newbies, for writing projects, and for a word-count tracking throughout a year.

Since 2020, she has hosted The Write Focus podcast, which offers ideas for fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. The heart of the podcast is productivity, process, craft, and tools. The summer series includes interviews with other writers.

Find yours here:

https://books2read.com/u/38ezzB (ebook)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6Y5GWG2 (ebook)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B713BXGS (paperback)

The various topics are scattered through the first three seasons of The Write Focus.

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

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

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

Listen on your favorite podcast site: from Apple to YouTube, Spotify and Podbean (my favs), Google Play, Amazon Music and Audible, Samsung and Player FM, Deezer and Podcaster, the rivals iHeart and Tune-in, and too many to list.

Here are the 4 easiest:

My favorite podcast is Podbean. https://eden5695.podbean.com/

YouTube direct link to the Mixed Miscellany playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na5LXb-83iM&list=PLXi3M_aM-d7ISCaEcoK4JV5wSUkGCmx_Z

Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=ffeb71ed17c3409d

 

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3 Planners for Writers

Why do Writers Need Planners?

I’m not just promoting 3 Planners here. I have a reason for creating each one.

The #1 guarantee of continual writing success is tracking your progress, with all the successes recorded. We writers have a tendency to focus on our current problems and set-backs.

While every publication is a major success, the daily grind often has us thinking we’re back-pedaling rather than advancing. Tracking our minor successes and checking off our benchmark goals provides us with the incentives we need to keep working.

Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

The Basic Planner: a Word-Count Focus

What helps writers achieve those two goals? For speed, we need to concentrate our mental energies on writing daily. For the long haul, we need to know our projects, current and next and future. When we focus on speed and longevity, we write more than we ever have before.

Word Trekker accomplishes these goals by advance planning for our projects and tracking our words daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.

Any hikers out there? This planner is for you. Match those words to the step-count for the Triple Crown of Hiking.

  • Pacific Crest Trial > 2,650 miles
  • Continental Divide Trail > 3,100 miles
  • Appalachian Trial > 2,193
  • AT international extension into Canada 1,319 >> 2, 193 with 1,319 = 3,512

One hiking mile = 100 words. As hikers venture along each trail, they trek from state to state. Setting the Triple Crown of Hiking as a writing goal keeps us going through the year.

Much less than $1 a month, this 6 x 9 planner helps you work toward One Million Words in a Year. Click the link to discover more.

Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

Think in Projects Rather than Words?

Plan those writing goals. Nest the projects; hatch as you achieve them. Celebrate victories; analyze challenges. Soar with Success with the Writing Nest.

Long-term goals are easy to set. Breaking the long-term goals into short-term goals helps us slog through the slow times. Those slow slogs can lead us to think we’re not achieving, yet a simple record will keep us motivated to continue on.

Where can we keep that record of achievements, short-term and long-term? A daily system that builds to mid-term benchmarks and seasonal achievements. That system should help us not only record our achievements but also set our long-term and short-term goals.

Sized 8 x 10, this undated planner (priced for $1 a month) lets us start anytime, taking breaks between projects or powering through the year. Click for more info.

cover by Deranged Doctor Design for Writers Ink Books
Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

The Planner for Newbies

Want to make writing a commitment rather than a hobby? Striving for professional publication rather than wannabe status? The Think/Pro planner helps make the conversion from newbie to writing pro.

$1 a month, this undated planner tracks word counts and healthy habits, offers creativity tips and tax tips, offers progress meters for projects and a weekly inspirational quote from a major writer.

In addition to the weekly spread with a Top 3 Task List are Monthly Reviews & Previews and Seasonal & Yearly Planning pages.

The Monthly Review has a Productivity Tracker and a Progress Meter as well as places to jot down Business Contacts and Expenses. Seasonal Previews ask you to polish the nuts and bolts of your projected words per week and sharpen up the time remaining before your deadline.  At the end of every month, the planner offers a record for victories as well as upcoming challenges.

Time to change “Seize the Day” into “Seize the Dream.”  For success, we need to Think/Pro.  This 8 x 10 planner will help.

 

 

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Writing Challenge Rewind ~ All through June

On The Write Focus, we’re posting a daily podcast from Write a Book in a Month, by Remi Black.

Daily check-ins include the project stage progressing word count as well as speculations on writing in general and the writing business in particular.

Click this link to visit TheWriteFocus blog.

 

Criteria for the Challenge ::

1] Daily Word Count

2] Length to Goal

3] Reason for the Goal

 

Each episode runs less than 10 minutes. Listen briefly every day or hoard up several episodes for when you fix a quick dinner, drive a short commute, or take a brisk walk.

Lessons for writing happen along the way!

Each episode will conclude with the two quotations from professional writers (Hemingway! Heinlein! Atwood! More!!!) that opened and closed the day’s writing sessions.

Episodes ::

  • 1 :: No Fooling
  • 2 :: Change of Plans
  • 3 :: Stick with the Plan
  • 4 :: Nix Distractions
  • 5 :: Watch for Warnings
  • 6 :: Life Rolls
  • 7 :: Win-Lose-Wind
  • 8 :: Critical vs. Creative
  • 9 :: Eat the Frog First
  • 10 :: The Tax Man Cometh
  • 11 :: Cocoons
  • 12 :: Six Words Short
  • 13 :: Wonders Never Cease
  • 14 :: One Project, Two Project
  • 15 :: Promotions
  • 16 :: Covers
  • 17 :: Frittery Jittery
  • 18 :: Flipping Out
  • 19 :: Input / Output
  • 20 :: Looking Ahead
  • 21 :: Short Post
  • 22 :: Biz Monday
  • 23 :: Master Book
  • 24 :: Expect the Unexpected
  • 25 :: Carpe Diem as Writers
  • 26 :: Nose to the Grindstone
  • 27 :: Writers’ Groups
  • 28 :: First Celebration
  • 29 :: Writers Conferences
  • 30 :: An End that’s Not an End and Lessons List
  • July 5th :: Aprés-Draft Update

Listen on the following sites. 

Bookmark your favorite to come back daily.

Podbean: The Write Focus (podbean.com)

Apple podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=0GFku2PbShWXiDhRp7JaDQ

YouTube Channel Writers Ink Books – YouTube

Join us!

Resources as of April 20

Amazon links are given because it’s easy, and for no other reason.

Purchase Write a Book in a Month at Amazon here.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0848MWXGD

Also mentioned in the first 10 episodes (March 31 to April 5) ~

Patty Jansen’s Self Publishing Unboxed Amazon.com: Self-publishing Unboxed (The Three–year, No-bestseller Plan For Making a Sustainable Living From Your Fiction Book 1) eBook: Jansen, Patty: Kindle Store

Purchase Think/Pro at Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-Pro-Advent-Writers/dp/1983248266/

The Think/Pro planner for writers can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Pro-Planner-M-Lee/dp/1983248673/

Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain/dp/0806111917/  

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Gifts from the Sea https://www.amazon.com/Gift-50th-Anniversary-Anne-Morrow-Lindbergh/dp/0679732411/

Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/B00RC3ZGN4/

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Going Indie? Afraid about Formatting?

Many writers — veterans included — think Indie Publishing is hard because of Formatting the Manuscript.

I tell you now, Formatting is EASY compared to writing character dynamics and events that surprise the reader.

If you’ve ever wondered about formatting, MS basics and keyboard shortcuts, the essential documents of Front and Back Matter, and the essential Masterbook, time to stop wondering and start doing.

You can do it. I did it. Let’s celebrate  Indie Publishing together.

It’s the last Foundations week for Discovering Your Novel, the summer series for The Write Focus.

Listen at this link. 

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Summer Series for The Write Focus

Summer Series ~ June / July / AugustDiscovering Your Novel

All summer our focus is the craft and process of writing.

M.A. Lee shares the various stages of Discovering Your Novel. We look at the Foundations, Visioning, Analysis, and Revision & pPublishing stages that bring a novel into the world.

The Focus for July ~ Envisioning

Time to Envision the whole story we want to tell. We need true clarity in our crystal ball. What do we envision?

7/7 ~ Envision the Plot >> the whole story, not the 7 main scenes. Plot Category with elements; exercises for writing improvement

7/14 ~  Envision the World >> Basic World, Stomping Grounds, Backstory, World Building nuts and bolts

7/21 ~ Envision Secondaries and More >> BFFs or not, foils and obstacles,  minions of evil

7/28 ~ Envision other Characters and Your Writing >> additional side characters, walk-ons and cameos; launch and novel openings, writers’ block and more.

The Focus for June ~ Foundations

6/1 ~ Introduction >> What makes writing successful? The discipline of  work, through persistence, completion, learning craft, and disciplined devotion

6/2 ~ Foundations A: Pick >> story / genre / protagonist / antagonist / tagline or theme

6/9 ~  Foundations B: Sketch >> story / the protagonist’s introduction / the antagonist’s introduction / the setting’s introduction / background

6/16 and 6/23 ~ Foundations C, in two parts: Know >>

Part 1: beginning / the protagonist’s dearest desire / ending/ greatest stress point / the protagonist’s nadir

Part 2: the protagonist’s zenith / early win by evil / final battle / early twist for the protagonist / the betrayal of the protagonist

6/30 ~ Foundations D: Build >> Set us the Manuscript’s foundation: for paperback and ebook / format / MS basics (how to type it), front matter / back matter / the masterbook

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus! Content copyright is 2021, Writers Ink Books.

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

Visit thewritefocus.blogspot.com for more information about The Write Focus.

Listen on your favorite podcast site:

My favorite podcast is Podbean. https://eden5695.podbean.com/

Then we have Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20

Spotify will let you listen to all the episodes without your doing a thing to select them. They may be a little out of order, though. 😉  https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=0GFku2PbShWXiDhRp7JaDQ

YouTube direct link to the Discovering Your Novel playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7IjuIS4daWlkiT4jRvRmnUM

Visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com for show notes about the entire Write Focus podcast. Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com for comments, questions, and speculations.
  • Summer Series :: writing craft
  • April into May focus :: Write a Book in a Month / Writing Challenge and Result
  • Winter series :: Think like a Pro
  • November 2020 :: What’s in a Name
  • Write the Novel / Edit, Proof, Publish
  • What’s Horrifying for Writers (Halloween week)
  • Newbie Mistakes and Notta Mistakes, including the inaugural episode on Oct. 6, 2020.

 

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The Write Focus ~ What’s In a Name, 3 parts

What’s In a Name, part 1 ~ How creatives develop names for their businesses along with brainstorming techniques

Listen: Follow the podcast at this link.  Aired November 11.

Transcript Here.

What’s In a Name, part 2 ~ Pen Names / Select and Maintain

Use the Link under part 1. This episode aired Nov. 18

Transcript Here.

What’s In a Name, part 3 ~ Names for Characters and Titles of Books/Series.

Use the Link under part 1. This episode aired Nov. 25.

Transcript Here.

Coming Up: We’re BookCasting with Think like a Pro.

Or is it Booktubing? Bookpodding? What do we call it?

IDK. We’re doing it, though!