5:18 / Defeat Writer's Block / Burnham Talks Blocks

The Write Focus

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

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

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