The Write Focus

Hi, y’all! It’s been a hectic week of the expected and unexpected again, with so many things swirling about that it’s best to call this Challenge episode “Spinning Wheels” or “Tornadoes”.

“Spinning W…

Hi all! We’re onto our third check-in for the Summer Writing Challenge.

As usual, I’ve overloaded myself in contemplating everything that I want to accomplish for June and July. To complete everythin…

Hi! It’s the 2nd Check-in for the Summer Writing Challenge, all through June and July, tracking not only words but also those other tasks that a write needs to do to pursue success.

For the first day…

Welcome to our 1st 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 J…

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 b…

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…

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 o…

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…

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…

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 th…

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 …

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 k…

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 T…

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 …

• 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 w…

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…

In the first part of this series, The Write Focus shared everything we had to say about Writer’s Block and how to defeat that three-headed monster.

When we research the topic, we find articles that c…

Writer’s Block looms like a sharp-clawed monster over every writer. A daily discipline—No Day without Lines—is extremely helpful, no matter how many you schedule for a particular day.

Nulla Dies Sine…

Defeating Writer’s Block is easy to say, not so easy to do. We writers have to discover the problem we’re having with those pesky little words.

1st, we have to find them—and they do like to hide.

2nd…

Hey! Our claim is that Writer’s Block doesn’t exist? And you say, “I don’t believe it. I’m blocked. I’m suffering with Writer’s Block.”

Believe it or not, the truth is that Writer’s Block does NOT ex…