Out of the Box & On the Page is a book to help you get unstuck when your writing isn’t going your way. It provides a series of exercises for 10 days to help you change your perspective on your writing and look at your story or your characters in new ways.

Candace Havens, the owner of the Write Workshop group on Yahoo, usually presents this material as a workshop, but has now put it into book form and it’s available through Lulu, either as a print book or an electronic download.

What I like about this book

The exercises are easy to do and interesting. For example, Day 6 involves using a piece of art to inspire new thoughts on your story. Day 7 guides you through reviewing another book to identify what works and what doesn’t work in that book. You can then apply what you’ve learned to your own book, to include the elements you like and to leave out the ones you don’t like.

One thing that confused me initially is that every other page in the book is blank. I wondered, why all the extra space? I figured it out later… it gives you plenty of room to complete the exercises right on the pages.

Because of this, I think the electronic copy of the book is the one to buy, so you can print another copy of it the next time you’re stuck and go through the exercises again. The exercises are broad enough that you can continue to apply them to each new story and still gain new insights into your writing.

I recommend this book for…

If you’re stuck on a story and thinking of just abandoning it out of frustration or sheer boredom with it, pick up a copy of Out of the Box & On the Page before you do. You might find that your story is a lot more exciting than you realized.

The print version is $16.97. The electronic version is $6.00. Buy a copy before December 31 and use the coupon code HOHOHO for another 20% off either format.

Chris Baty is the mastermind behind National Novel Writing Month. Together with 20 friends in 1999, he set out to each write a novel in a month. Six of them managed to cross the 50,000-word finish line. (Yes, 50,000 words is short by today’s novel standards–Chris arrived at that number by counting the words in the shortest novel on his bookshelf, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World– but it is an achievable goal for a month of writing, especially if you already have a full-time job). Dreadful prose, perhaps, but they had done it. And as each year went by and NaNo grew to encompass thousands of novelists across the world, Chris learned some lessons from the early years:

1. Enlightment is Overrated – Waiting until you are old enough or know enough to write your novel just wastes good years you could be writing great and no-so-great books.

2. Being Busy is Good For Your Writing – Weeks of free time, with nothing to do but write, seldom produce writing and busy people get the most done in life. So write now, no matter how busy you are.

3. Plot Happens – You don’t need a plot to begin writing. It’s okay to just start writing, even if you know nothing about your story.

4. Writing for Its Own Sake Has Surprising Rewards – Writing a novel feels great. It changes how you read books, makes you appreciate the craft that goes into a book more. And writing is the best way to get better at writing.

And out of his experiences with NaNoWriMo, he wrote No Plot? No Problem! as a guidebook for writers to help them through four weeks of hardcore novel-writing. He includes a lot of examples offered up by NaNoWriMo participants of things that helped them push through to the 50,000 word finish.

How It’s Put Together: The chapter titles in the book are descriptive and give you a good idea of what Chris covers in each one:

Section 1: A Round-Trip Ticket to Novel-land: Gearing up for Your Writing Adventure!

• Chapter 1 – Secret Weapons, Exuberant Imperfections, and the End of the “One Day” Novelist
• Chapter 2 – Time-Finding, News-Breaking, and a Step-by-Step Guide to Transforming Loved Ones into Effective Agents of Guilt and Terror
• Chapter 3 – Noveling Nests, Magical Tools, and a Growing Stockpile of Delicious Incentives
• Chapter 4 – Cruising for Characters, Panning for Plots, and the First Exciting Glimpses of the Book Within

Section 2: Write Here! Write Now! A Frantic, Fantastic Week-by-Week Overview to Bashing Out Your Book

• Chapter 5 – WEEK ONE: Trumpets Blaring, Angels Singing, and Triumph on the Wind
• Chapter 6 – WEEK TWO: Storm Clouds, Plot Flashes, and the Return of Reality
• Chapter 7 – WEEK THREE: Clearing Skies, Warmer Weather, and a Jetpack on Your Back
• Chapter 8 – WEEK FOUR: Champagne and the Roar of the Crowd
• Chapter 9 – I Wrote a Novel. Now What?

How It Helped Me: One of the best things about this book is the over-the-top humor that Baty weaves into each sentence. The exuberant enthusiasm is like a shot of double espresso and it makes me want to sit down and start writing just for the sheer joy of it. The entire tone of the book is encouraging; he makes writing feel fun.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It: I’d recommend this book to new writers who are looking for a way to get a novel written. The humor and weekly chapters of encouragement can carry you through a first draft.

I think that more experienced writers could also benefit from reading the book, especially if you’re falling into a rut with your writing. Following Chris’s advice and churning out a first draft in a month might be a good way to shake up your routine and take your writing in a different direction. You could even use it to whip out that interesting novel idea that you’ve been toying with. The one you aren’t sure about writing, but it still flits around in your brain, unwilling to leave. Pick up a copy of No Plot? No Problem! today and experience the exhilarating pace of a 30-day novel.

In keeping with the theme of characters this month, here’s another book on creating compelling characters.  This book was written by Holly Lisle and is part of her Writing Clinics bundle.  This is a fun book.  Holly has a great sense of humor and it comes out best in the last section on the sins.

How It’s Put Together:  This book has three main sections, each with exercises to apply the information to your characters.

1 – Ask Them Anything

Get to know your characters through determining the answers to a variety of questions on

• the character’s compelling need
• his work and play
• his past, present and future
• his friends, enemies and lovers
• life and death
• culture, religion and education
• his moral stance

All this detail might seem overwhelming, but Holly recommends that you start with answering just a few questions in each section. You can work through a set of questions in greater detail later on if your story would benefit from it.

2 – Bring Them to Life

Exercises let you find out more about your character through interviews, the character’s setting, his dialogue, exposition and action.

3 – The Sins of Characterization, and How to Commit Them Right

Holly discusses the five sins of exposition…

• Core Dump – big lumps of the author’s research dumped into the story
• Dust and Cobwebs – long, itemized sections of tedious description
• MIrror, Mirror on the Wall – where the hero or heroine admire themselves in a reflective surface
• Behemoth – the hundred-plus word sentence of tedious details
• Superman vs. The Gremlin – Hero who is perfect in every way versus Villain who is evil, deformed and all things wretched and loathsome

the five sins of dialogue…

• As You Know, Bob – two characters telling each other what they already know
• Headless Horseman – dialogue with no tags or action to denote who is speaking or what the characters are doing while talking (I do this all the time in my first drafts.  Thank heavens for revisions.)
• Coffee and a Bagel – all the nonsense pleasantries we say to one another (Hi, how are you doing, what do you think of the weather, etc.)
• Seltzer – dialogue that is all fizz, no substance – usually something witty the writer thought to have the character say that has no relevance to the story
• Elephant at the Tea Party – characters talking around and avoiding the primary issues and compelling needs

and the five sins of action…

• The Ben Franklin – mind-numbing detail of a character’s daily routine
• The Snowman – action that is bold and exciting, but then melts away to nothing because the author chickened out
• Door, Two Guns, No Ammo – exciting action with no possible way to resolve it… also known as painting yourself into a corner
• Naked Chick at the Opera – something so bizarre and out of place in the story that it catapults the reader out of the story and back to reality
• The Brain Transplant – stupid, drooling idiot character has moment of impossible brilliance or impossibly brilliant character does something agonizingly stupid

and best of all, shows you how to use them correctly in your writing.  Yes, there are actually correct ways to incorporate all of the above sins into a story.  Well, except for the Brain Transplant.  There’s no way to do that right.  Just cut that section out of your story and rewrite it.

How It Helped Me: There is such a wealth of information in this book.  When I got my copy, I set down to read through it first (before beginning the exercises) and wow.  Just reading the questions in the Ask Them Anything section sparked all kinds of ideas for the characters in my book.  The most helpful idea for me was that of using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to determine where your character is at in his or her life.  Using the hierarchy and determining the character’s compelling need has provided a great basic definition for my characters.

This book explains how Holly creates her characters. But the best part is that by following her example, you won’t create characters like hers. You’ll create characters that are uniquely your own. Characters that live and breathe and are remembered by the reader long past your story’s end.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  This book is actually applicable for writers of all levels.  A beginner can use it to understand the basics of creating three-dimensional characters.  Experienced writers can use Holly’s exercises to refresh their characters and add more depth.  Pick up a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

Format:  147-page PDF file (e-book)

I’m going to be releasing a new mini course on building characters this month so to go along with that here’s a review of an oldie, but goody. Creating Characters by Dwight V. Swain was published in 1990, but it still has great information on putting together interesting story people.

How It’s Put Together: The book has seventeen chapters focusing on different aspects of creating characters. The chapters are short, only 5-10 pages each and you can dip into them selectively to add nuances to your characters.

1 – The Core of Character: What’s the one key element any major character must have? The ability to care.

Giving your character something to care deeply makes him an individual, and gives you conflict potential. Threatening the thing that your character cares about provides the drive behind the character… a reason for him to keep going throughout your story.

2 – Searching Out Your Characters: How do you find the right character? You scan the applicants until you locate one who turns you on and fits the part.

It’s important to get a character that fits your private quirks and standards… you’ll be writing your book for a while and you need a character that you will still like three months, six months or a year down the road. One way to zero in on your character is to pay attention to your reactions to real people around you. Find someone that sets off strong feelings in you and consider using him or her in your story.

When you have an initial idea for a character, you need to provide enough characteristics that make his story behavior plausible. You rationalize his presence and behavior in your story.

3 – Labels, Labels: Why do you label a character? Your reader needs some clue or two to help him recognize each of your story people.

This is one area where I definitely notice if an author is not very proficient – usually too many characters are introduced too quickly with not enough tags or labels to help me differentiate between them. They blur together and I’m left confused.

Swain recommends that you define the dominant impression that a character gives, using four attributes – sex, age, vocation, and manner. Sex and age are obvious. Vocation can refer to a character’s primary occupation, such as doctor, lawyer, used car salesmen, or less obvious ones such as housewife, invalid, bag lady, or ’significant other’. Manner is an individual’s personal bearing; his or her habitual stance or style. Terms such as loud and pushy, clumsy, grouchy, sympathetic can combine with an occupation to give you a sloppy waitress, a harried nurse or a wise-cracking invalid. Swain also covers how to use the labels in introducing your character through description and appearance, action, dialogue or thoughts and introspection.

4 – Fleshing Out: How do you make a character real? You provide him or her with appropriate tags, traits, and relationships.

Swain starts by warning that you can make a character too complex. It is better to use fairly clear and simply traits. A tag is a limited, specialized label and includes such items as such as a name, appearance, ability, speech, mannerism, and attitude. Swain also touches on creating a character dossier to catalog all the traits, labels and other characteristics of your cast. He chooses to reverse the process–instead of creating a full dossier at the beginning, he lays out characters in a quick pass and then adds character details as he needs them while writing the story.

5 – The World Within: 1: How do you motivate a character? You devise something that he or she must change in order to win happiness.

Swain defines happiness, illustrating that it means different things to different people–a characteristic that lends itself to unique story people. He also examines unhappiness and fear… both good motivators for a character’s behavior.

6 – The World Within: 2: How do you keep a character moving? You point that character towards his or her private future.

In this chapter, you learn about Direction, Goal, Drive, and Attitude.

Direction – the road to happiness. He loosely defines it as a tendency to lead the kind of life the character enjoys, meaning that the character will be searching for experiences that bring pleasure and avoiding experiences that bring pain. He lists five types of desires that the character might be searching for – adventure, security, recognition, response and power. The ratio between the elements the character zeros in on establishes the direction the character goes.

Goal – Dissatisfaction as dynamic. A goal is born out of dissatisfaction with a situation. The desire to change the situation to something that the character prefers more provides the character’s goal – the changed situation.

Drive – The “Give a Hoot” factor. Drive is mainly the intensity with which a character wants to change a situation. To give a character drive Swain lists four steps:

1. You devise something for him to care about, consciously or otherwise.
2. You fit him out with a suitable goal, in view of the direction you’ve postulated for him.
3. You threaten that goal, that something he cares about.
4. You establish reasons for him not to quit, reasons to continue to fight against the threat and reach his goal.

Attitude – Character plus hangup. This is the character’s consistent disposition, how the character views the world around him.

7 – The Breath of Life: How do you bring a character to life? You make the character reveal emotion.

Readers experience empathy with characters. If your character displays emotion, your reader feels that emotion also. This leads the reader to identify more with the character. To give emotions to your character, you must start by feeling the emotions yourself.

Courage is also important in a character. The best characters are like us and more. The more is usually the courage to continue on toward the goal in the face of whatever danger or obstacles arise. It’s a quality we all want to have and it increases reader identification with the character.

8 – Bent Twigs: How much background should you give a character? Only enough to make your reader–and you–believe in him.

Background is necessary for three reasons:

1. To make the character unique.
2. To give the character reasons for behaving as he does.
3. To make him believable, to give him depth.

The four components to Background are Body, Environment, Experience and Ideas. Together they form the reasons why a character does the things he does and the reasons why he doesn’t do other things. Swain suggests coming up with a few details from each of the four areas.

9 – Wild Cards: What goes into building an offbeat character? The same elements that you use in creating any story person–only more so.

This chapter covers the eccentric, defined as someone who feels a tremendous need to maintain his individuality, and the psycho, someone who has moved beyond minor deviations of normal behavior to severe deviations. The eccentric tends to be open in his aberration and viewed as harmless, while the psycho masks his or aberration or is mistrusted or feared. Swain provides guidance on how to fashion these special characters.

10 – The Role of Roles: How do you treat a hero? You shape the hero to fit the job he or she has to do.

Here Swain covers eight types of roles with guidelines for building and portraying them effectively.

• The interesting character
• The memorable character
• The viewpoint character
• The protagonist
• The antagonist
• The love interest character
• The incidental character
• The non-human character

11 – The Light Touch: How do you make a character amusing? You replace reader assumptions with offbeat alternatives. T

his chapter thoroughly covers what humor is and how to use it in a story.

12 – The Right Words: How do you describe a character effectively? You build the character with significant specifics that lead readers to feel the way you want them to feel.

Your goal as a writer is to evoke or create feeling in your reader. He advises dumping generalities and choosing significant details that reveal pertinent facts about the character and make him a unique individual.

13 – The Things They Say: How do you write good dialogue? You pay as much attention to feelings as to words.

Choosing the right words to put in a character’s mouth can also establish him as a unique individual, distinct from the others in the story. Dialogue can also provide conflict and Swain suggests using dialogue to show the characters attempting to influence someone’s attitude or behavior, to help or hinder another character.

14 – Variations On a Theme: How do you treat characters in various lengths, media, and genres? You design your people to fit your market.

Swain covers:

• The Short Story Character
• The Long Story Character
• The Category Character (or genre character)
• The Radio Character (valid today as audio books continue to be popular)
• The Stage Character
• The Film/TV Character

15 – The Character Out of Time: How do you get people to read about characters in unfamiliar worlds? You provide emotional insight into the world and individuals involved.

In this chapter, Swain describes characters from the past (history); future (as in science fiction); and those in the present, but “not-you” (contemporary groups whose lifestyles are outside of your norm).

16 – The Dynamics of Disbelief: How do you cope when readers don’t believe in your characters and stories? You plug the gaps where belief leaks out.

Swain lists seven major categories that can disrupt a reader’s suspension of disbelief and provides suggestions for how to fix them.

1. You can fall out of viewpoint.
2. You can fail to do enough research.
3. You can tell your story instead of showing it.
4. You can leave gaps in the motivation/reaction (M/R) stairway.
5. You can fail to plant the things you should.
6. You can give your characters things to do that your readers find distasteful.
7. You can make the characters themselves less than likable.

17 – The Search for Zest: How do you maintain your cutting edge as a writer? You draw on the stimulus of story people.

The research and study of people, along with trying new experiences, will fill your mind with new images and ideas. New and different raw materials make for fresh settings, fresh plot concepts and fresh story people. Continually reach for more of life to maintain a zest for your characters and stories.

How It Helped Me: While the book can help you create a character from scratch, it really excels in helping you improve an existing character. Chapter 6 was an eye-opener for me. Using Direction, Goal, Drive and Attitude as quick touch-points gave me a handle on my characters that I didn’t have before. There’s a lot less aimless wandering in my stories now as my characters have a stronger purpose for their actions.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It: This book will be of most use to the writer that is still working on the basics of craft. The short chapters make it easy to jump in and grab a piece of information that will help round out a character. In fact, I’d recommend using it that way more than trying to follow every piece of advice in each chapter. Dip in and choose individual bits when you need them.

Though it isn’t a new kid on the publishing block, there is plenty of basic information that is still relevant to building story characters. Pick up a copy of Creating Characters today.

This little book is a favorite of mine. You can tell by the many sticky notes I have stuck to the pages marking spots I use frequently.  It has short chapters full of specific exercises and advice on how to analyze and improve your writing.  It has huge appeal for an analytic writer like myself.

How It’s Put Together:  This book is a collection of 79 very short chapters on a variety of subjects – character, editing, writing scenes, word choice, creativity, pacing, and dialogue, to name a few.  Each subject is covered in several chapters, but they are laid out randomly.  A chapter on getting published is followed by one on dialogue, for example.  I’ve read other reviews of the book which criticize this particular feature.

For my own use, I rather like how the book is structured.  It allows me to focus on individual snippets of information, say a short vignette on how to avoid writing bad dialogue, rather than being faced with a longer chapter on dialogue that has multiple points that I must then sort through.  The sorting has been pre-done for me and everything is neatly packaged in chapters of 2-4 pages with a single point to make.  The short chapters are easy to consume in a brief sitting.  You might say that the book has been formatted for the busy schedules and short attention span of the newer generations.

Another feature that I adore are the graphs and charts that Smith uses throughout.  I love to analyze things and he provides different methods of analyzing your writing from the pacing in your novel to the intensity of your scenes.  If you’re more of a technical writer, you’ll get a kick out of trying the different analysis techniques.

How It Helped Me: I have used many of the tools and techniques included in this book. One of my favorites and very useful – the 10-Scene Structure. 

You begin the 10-Scene Structure by sketching out five scenes – the Opener, the Point of No Return Complication, a Major Complication, the Closer (also known as the Climax) and the Ending.  These are the major highlights of your book. Once you have those significant events in place, you go back and add in the five other major scenes (more complications) that help you move from the beginning of the story to the end.  At the end, you have a good roadmap for where your story is headed and the high points (or low points) to hit along the way.

Such an easy method for laying out a novel.  I’ve plotted two novels so far using the 10-Scene Structure and it made the process a lot easier.  The best part is that it doesn’t take away your freedom to be spontaneous during the writing process.  You can still throw in an unexpected scene, event or character.  The 10-Scene Structure just helps you keep on the path to the end of the novel. It doesn’t prevent you from taking the scenic route or complete detours off the main path.

One other item from Smith’s book was a huge eye-opener for me - ”Story is what happens to people.”  A light bulb went on over my head when I read that sentence.  In thinking about my own reading habits, I don’t read a book for the events in it.  I read a book to see how characters, how individuals handle things that happen to them.  How does a woman handle a betrayal that tears her marriage apart?  How does a farm boy handle the responsibility of saving his village or his kingdom?  How does a police detective handle a crime wave when he’s dealing with his own personal problems?  I want to know about the people in the stories and how they get through the strange, sad, horrific, or unusual things that happen in their lives.  And that’s what I should focus on when I’m writing my own stories.  Great advice from a terrific little book.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It: This book is probably most useful for the intermediate writer–the one who has written some short stories or a novel and is looking for ways to improve her writing and story. A beginning writer can certainly use the information in this book, but would need to be careful not to get caught up in the techniques and processes to the exclusion of actually writing their own story.

If you’ve completed a few pieces and are looking for something to take your writing to the next level, try The Writer’s Little Helper.  It’ll keep you coming back for a long time to mine all the gems included in it.

I’ve owned this book for about two years now and I reread it often.  It never fails to inspire me.  Secretly I want to be Lynn Viehl.  When she wrote Way of the Cheetah, she had published thirty-two novels in six years.  She’s up to 38 novels now over 5 genres.  Can you imagine writing so much?

She continues to refine her writing process toward greater efficiency and productivity and she shares her methods and philosophies in this book.
 
How It’s Put Together:  Lynn uses the cheetah as a model for writers and includes examples of the parallels that can be drawn between how a cheetah behaves and how a writer should behave. Each chapter of the book begins with the cheetah example, how it applies to a writer and ends with exercises that the writer can do to practice the advice Lynn provides.

Part One: Eye of the Cheetah

The chapters in this section cover why we write, the importance of telling a story, how to focus to increase your productivity, and how to use self-discipline to write every day.

Part Two: The Writing Savanna

Lynn talks about the lack of respect that writers often experience, especially from family members who think writing is just a cute hobby. She then gives advice on how to set up your environment (your work space, writing equipment like computers and printers, and even your mind and body through diet and exercise) to support and provide legitimacy for your writing. It’s important that you take your work seriously, even if no one else around you does.

Part Three: Running Down the Story

This last section goes into the writing itself. Lynn relates her own process for writing – a very methodical, step-by-step process that she’s used for over ten years. She lists out the ten steps she uses when writing a first draft along with her own daily schedule – writing new material from 4 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with an hour break mid-morning, followed by editing the day’s work from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. or midnight. She wisely recommends that a new writer NOT follow her own schedule, but instead work out a writing schedule that fits his or her own life. She then explains the daily edit process she uses, along with the full manuscript edit that she does when the first draft is complete.

How It Helped Me: This book gave me hope. I don’t have to be the most talented writer out there. I just need to be persistent and productive, because this is where many writers fail. If I keep focused on the story and keep producing the best writing I can, I have a better chance at succeeding than a more talented writer who spends most of his time talking about writing, rather than producing work.  (Come to think of it, Heather Sellers said the same thing in Page After Page.)

As Lynn says in the beginning – by following the advice she details in this book, she’s managed to turn out over thirty novels in six years. You may not achieve that level of productivity or you might surpass it. Either way, this book can point out ways for you to be more efficient and more productive in your writing routine. 

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  This book is good for beginning writers – to help them start out efficiently. It’s also great for more seasoned writers who are looking to increase their productivity and move beyond their current level.

Get this book and read it thoroughly. It’s a great investment in yourself and your writing career for only $9.95. 

Format:  72-page PDF file (e-book)

This is a book about encouragement and inspiration from Heather Sellers.  It’s not a lesson on the writing craft, but more about how to craft a life that supports your writing.  Heather’s light and casual tone makes the book a fun read.  The chapters are short and easy to consume in brief sittings. 

How It’s Put Together:  Thirty chapters divided into three sections:

Blank Pages:  Creating a New Writing Self

1. The First Day – overcoming your resistance to writing and change
2. Writing You Don’t Do Alone – writing is both secret and a community activity
3. Lover on the Side, Lover in the Center – is your writing in the center of your heart or do you keep it fondly off to one side?  Both are okay, just understand the choice you are making.
4. Tools 101 -a discussion of the tools a writer really needs (and they’re either cheap or free)
5. Journals – most writers have one or think they should have one.  Heather advises journaling with no rules.  Write daily or don’t.  Write in one or many different journals.  Just write.
6. Sleeping With Books – reading is an essential part of being a writer.  Keep books close at hand and immerse yourself in them.
7. Butt in Chair – learning to sit alone in a room to get the writing done
8. The Russian Lady – do you want to write or do you feel you should write? You can write or not write.  Only you know what is right for you.
9. The Rents – how your parents help define your writing life
10. Anxiety – managing the anxiety inherent in writing
11. Being Away From the Work – how time off from writing can cost you days to get back in groove
12. Reversing the Message – being open to learning and overcoming resistance (fear) that changes good messages to their opposite, such as “You can write” to “You can’t write”

Turning Pages:  How to Maintain Your Commitment to Writing 

1. Blank and Cranky – when your mood is ugly, take time off and wallow.  It will get you through it and back to writing faster.
2. Dare to Suck – don’t let your bad writing scare you away.  Keep writing and get better.
3. Compost – use the material of your life, your history, that has matured and ripened into something rich
4. Dreaming Deep – getting into the Zone, focusing like a child to get at your best material
5. How to Be Unpopular and Why – writing requires a lot of stamina and energy.  To make room in your life to support your writing, you need to say No to activities that take up your time or energy.
6. Passionate Irritation – talk about life less and write more.  Keep the drama on the page.
7. Bad Childhoods – suffering doesn’t matter.  Awareness and insight about people matter.
8. Three Years – give yourself time to develop your writing.  You’re going to doing this for your whole life.  You have time.
9. Little Loops – learning to identify the self-defeating tracks that play in our head and stop us from achieving our writing potential
10. Blocked – a block is a snarl of complex fears and anxieties, but you can learn to manage it
11. When Do You Say It? – finding the courage to say “I am a writer.”

New Pages:  Finding Your Place in the World of Writing

1. Fame and Fortune – they rarely come to a writer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a success doing what you love
2. Mentors – finding a mentor by becoming ready or “mentor-able”
3. Rejection, Bliss, Speeding Tickets – learning to accept rejection as part of the writing life
4. False Modesty – knowing what you do well and acknowledging it is not a bad thing
5. Workshops – they can help you learn to deal with criticism and make better mistakes in your writing
6. Ambition – understanding what kind of writing life you want to have
7. A Wave Suspended – maintaining a state of passion and power just waiting to be unleashed and taking the next steps in your writing life

In each chapter she shares examples from her own life and follows it up with exercises that the reader can follow to try out her advice. 

Each chapter has from 1-5 exercises and they are unique.  Everything from writing a short love letter to your novel (treating it like a treasured lover you can’t wait to spend time with) to writing down a To-Do list of everything in your life that you need to do (all those errands and chores that collectively keep you from writing) and then burning it (so you can learn to say no to things that eat up your time and then use that time for writing instead).

How It Helped Me:  I read writing books for mostly one reason – I’m looking for the perfect “system”.  The process or way of writing that, if followed correctly, will result in the perfect novel, written in one clean draft, polished and ready to be snapped up by an ecstatic agent who vows it will sell within minutes of taking it on.

It’s a pipe dream, I know.  But I’m still looking for that system.  I want a good repeatable process that turns out the best book I can write, one after another.  Reading writing books give me a glimpse into the process that other writers follow.  Into how they think and get through the rough spots.

From Heather, I learned that she has learned to make writing part of her every day life.  That she loves books and even sleeps with them scattered about her bed.  That she waited a long time to call herself “Writer”.  That she has doubts about her own abilities, but keeps on writing anyway. That sounds a lot like me.

One of the greatest mantras to remember as a writer is written on page 115.  “The most important talent might be the talent for practice itself.”  In this chapter, Heather talks about developing the habit of practicing your writing.  Of doing it regularly, just like musicians, and athletes, and dancers.  We all assume that because we learn to speak and write early in life, we are automatically qualified to be a writer.  But the truth is that writing takes a lot of practice.  And one of the best kept secrets?  A writer who practices writing faithfully can often be more successful than a really talented writer who only writes when the mood strikes him.  There’s much to be said for dogged persistence and Heather encourages the reader to practice writing.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  Anyone who is looking for a positive, happy writing life.  If your writing has been drudgery and you have to drag yourself to your writing chair, pick up Page After Page and see if it doesn’t put some fun back into your writing.

This is one of those very rare books – the kind you see advertised in a magazine and then decide to buy just based on the ad. How often does that happen? For me, not that often, but this ad did the job and got me to buy the book. And I’m glad I did.

Write is a Verb is all about motivation – doing whatever works for you to get the writing done. Since we are all unique individuals, we all have unique problems with motivations and writer’s block. And there is no one-size-fits-all solution to get you writing again, though many people will quote “rules” at you and insist that if you will just follow them you’ll start writing again.

Bill O’Hanlon’s been a psychotherapist for many years and he knows that what works for one person, won’t necessarily work for someone else. So what Bill has done in Write is a Verb is to give you multiple methods to get you writing again. At least one will be the right tool for you.

How It’s Put Together
The book has ten chapters and a bonus DVD inside the back cover.  Each chapter has exercises to follow to apply the material from that chapter and Key Points at the end of the chapter to summarize what has been covered.

Chapter 1: The Juice – Finding the Energy to Write
Bill covers the four types of writing energies, motivational patterns and how fear can tell you what your writing problem is. The motivational patterns discussion was very interesting for me. I discovered that Negative Present Motivation is a primary driver for me – “I don’t like having a day job where I work for someone else, so I’m going to write myself out of that job into being a full-time writer.”

The next seven chapters are devoted to different methods to get your writing done:

Chapter 2: Writing Begets Writing – Bum glue and moving fingers will get your writing done

Chapter 3: Do One Thing Different – Changing one small thing to get your writing done

Chapter 4: Baby Steps, Baby Steps – The small-steps method for getting your writing done

Chapter 5: The Promise Method - Using commitments to get your writing done

Chapter 6: The Solution-Oriented Method – Revisiting what has worked in the past to get your writing done

Chapter 7: Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Poorly – Embracing mistakes, failure, and imperfection to get your writing done

Chapter 8: It’s Not About You, It’s All About You – Taking the focus off yourself to overcome writer’s block and other barriers to writing

Chapter 9: Clueless in Publishing Land – Three crucial tips for getting published
Chapter 9 is off-topic from the rest of the material on motivating yourself.  It covers the publishing aspect of a book thoroughly from the perspective of differentiating yourself with a platform, positioning and your proposal.  It’s valuable material though, and he goes into great depth to help you determine your unique focus or slant that will help you stand out from other writers.

Chapter 10: Common Writing Poisons and Their Antidotes – How to challenge unhelpful ideas or attitudes that will kill your writing dreams and ambitions.This final chapter covers five poisons that we allow into our thinking:

• Perfection
• “I don’t have anything original to say”
• “I don’t have time to write”
• “This will never get published, so why bother?”
• “I’m not inspired/in the mood to write”. 

He provides antidotes to these poisonous thoughts to help you get writing again.

Bonus DVD – The DVD contains a video of one of Bill’s writing and publishing boot camps along with electronic versions of all the exercise worksheets in the book.  Very convenient for printing out the worksheets, so you don’t have to write in the book itself. 

The DVD also contains six exclusive bonuses – handouts from Bill’s workshops:

1 – The 10 Ps to Getting Your Book Written & Published
2 – How to Research the Market and the Competition
3 – Crafting an Origin Story
4 – Four Essential Nonfiction Book Proposal Elements
5 – How to Get an Agent
6 – The Money & Legal Stuff About Trade Books

How It Helped Me:  Chapter 3 – Do One Thing Different was the most helpful to me.  It leads you through discovering the patterns that work for you (in setting, timing, tools, sound, people, and several others) and the patterns that don’t.  I discovered that while I tell myself that I can write with the TV on in the background, my reality is that TV distracts me and my work is of poor quality, if I get any writing done at all, while it is on.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  Anyone who is having trouble with getting motivated to write can use this book.  Because Bill outlines so many different methods, there is sure to be one listed that can help you.  The key to making the book useful is to actually complete the exercises, rather than just reading them.If you’ve been struggling to get yourself to write, take a look at Write is a Verb.