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

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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

• Of that number, 100 of them sold over one million copies EACH.

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

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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.)

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 claim 5 types or 10 types of Writer’s Block. Shudder. I don’t want even to contemplate 10 types. Yet I read the article—so you don’t have to. Guess what? Those 10 types are actually just an expansion of the 3 types we covered in our series—as were the 5 types.

And the solutions were exactly what we listed: breaks and escapes, switching projects, overcoming fears and learning new writing skills, pursuing a healthy lifestyle, regaining curiosity, and practicing creativity.

We can do this. We can DEFEAT WRITER’S BLOCK. (Shout it!)

In this segment, we’ll explore advice from other writers, pro writers who have to meet deadlines and are too professional to churn out boring words. Let’s explore what they say.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome

Total Run Time = 17:08

Links

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, with all NEW information based on 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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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.)

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 Linea is our mantra, right?

We can overcome a simple refusal to write by maintaining discipline and side projects and our escapes when we’re overwhelmed.

We can defeat Procrastination by overcoming the Twin Fears of Failure and of Judgment. If our worries are failure and judgment, those problems are not with our writing but are inside ourselves. Root them out. Our writing is for us. Improve whatever weaknesses we see. When people point out weaknesses, consider these learning opportunities and keep improving.

We’ve reached the slimy cave of that real Horrible, Terrible Monster than can destroy everything, not just our writing but our hopes and joys.

Type 3 Writer’s Block is Inertia, and Writer’s Inertia kills words and contentment, plans and dreams, grace and well-being.

Yet we can and must defeat Inertia. Here’s how.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome

Total Run Time = 16:25

Links to Think like a Pro, original source with other info added:

https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-Pro-Advent-Writers/dp/

Books2Read https://books2read.com/u/4AxWAd

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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.)

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, we have to write them down—whether in a notebook or straight to the keyboard. That’s a whole problem on its own. We can’t count the Block as a simple disruption, a wholesale explosion of our writing time.

It’s the Desire and the Initiative to write that’s the problem.

In our diagnostic quiz, at the end of the Introduction segment, the weakness of our desire, the weakness of our initiative are driving factors that keep us out of our chair.

Type 1 of Writer’s Block is Writer’s Refusal, and I consider it the easiest of the Blocks to diagnose, admit, and defeat.

Type 2 is a harder Block to defeat. What is the Type 2 Block? Writer’s Procrastination.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome

Total Run Time = 16:14

Links to Think like a Pro, original source with other info added:

https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-Pro-Advent-Writers/dp/

Books2Read https://books2read.com/u/4AxWAd

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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.)

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 exist. Not. No way. Nope. We can write, but something keeps us from writing what we very well need to write.

At the end of our last episode, the introduction to this series on Defeating Writer’s Block, we classified 3 types. Knowing the type that’s affecting us, that’s part of the solution to any Writer’s Block . . . for we can make claims, we can repeat a mantra–but something’s blocking us.

The other part of the solution to Writer’s Block is our WILL–even if we don’t want to write, we MUST. We NEED to. We gotta!

The only problem with saying “MUST and NEED and GOTTA” is that I’m afflicted with bloody-mindedness. As soon as someone commands must / need / have to / gotta–my bloody-mindedness kicks in. “Oh yeah? I think NOT.”

That’s where WILL comes in—and that’s our focus this week. Overcoming Type I of Writer’s Block, classified as Writer’s Refusal.

[Did I shout enough?]

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome

Total Run Time = 22:51

Links to Think like a Pro, original source with other info added:

https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-Pro-Advent-Writers/dp/

Books2Read https://books2read.com/u/4AxWAd

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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.)

 Can you name a phrase that every writer fears? Try “Writer’s Block”.

We writers all have a deep-seated fear when we hear those two words side by side. Writer’s Block—those should be forbidden to speak together.

We have quite a number of pro writers who claim there’s no such things as Writer’s Block, and I’m one of them—but I will admit that I find myself refusing to write or avoiding my desk or just stuck on a story. Distractions and disruptions occur, and before we know it, weeks—not days, weeks—have passed. With few words written, our writing plans are blown. Guilt descends—and the clouds of guilt and disappointment and dismay and more disrupters descend and . . . gosh, we don’t even want to think about it.

That’s the purpose of this series: we want to Defeat that Writer’s Block.

To do that, we have to look more closely at Writer’s Block than we want to. In this February month of love, let’s look at what prevents us from pursuing our love of writing.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome

Total Run Time = 17:00

Links

Links to Think like a Pro, original source with other info added:

https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-Pro-Advent-Writers/dp/

Books2Read https://books2read.com/u/4AxWAd

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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.)

In the last episode, we began our look at a process method I call Plot 7. This week we finish the Plot 7 and our series on Discovering Plot. Coming up for February are four episodes on Overcoming Writer’s Block.

The Plot 7 is wonderful for sparking ideas for a new novel or novella. It’s too deep for a short story.

In the Plot 7 are the 7 most important scenes for the novel. We covered the Beginning, the Very End, and the Roughest Moment / the Ordeal. This episode covers the last 4 … and these are the hardest four.

By the time writers finish these 7 scenes, we have a great start on the story.

The between-scenes and sequels will remain for us to write—but we’ll know our direction and the whole process of drafting the novel will flow easily.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome

Total Run Time = 16:32

Link to Lester Dent’s Plot Formula for Short Stories

Episode 1 / Short Narratives / Mixed Miscellany https://eden5695.podbean.com/e/322-short-narratives-part-1-mixed-miscellany-summer-series/

Links to Think like a Pro, source for the Plot 7, other info added:

https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-Pro-Advent-Writers/dp/

Books2Read https://books2read.com/u/4AxWAd

Links to the Ebook Discovering Plot

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0838PTN49

https://books2read.com/u/bOJK6K

Link to a paperback 8 x 10 bundle for plot / characters / branding / sentence craft, called Discovering Your Writing https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08691892S

Trailer https://youtu.be/hTVQn92kNBk

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 Discovering Your Plot, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook of the same name.

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

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

Write to us at [email protected].

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.)