For any writer who has felt daunted by the demands of the daily battle with the page, Word Work provides reassurance and insight. Appealing to your head and heart, award-winning fiction writer Bruce Holland Rogers offers understanding and practical advice on facing a writer's difficulties. Personal stories drawn from two decades of writing experience alternate with psychological theory and anecdotes from the lives of other established writers. Unlike most writing books, Word Work doesn't just offer therapy for those times when things aren't going well; instead, it presents hands-on things you can do to jump-start the process and get the words flowing again. Refreshingly heretical, Rogers gives the advice other writing books don't touch: Maybe you should quit your day job, whatever the risks. Maybe procrastination is good for you and your work. Maybe your partner really is hurting your writing. You'll find original insights into the nature of writer's block, the benefits of writerly friendships, and a sure-fire cure for envy. Rogers helps you through the minefields of criticism, rejection, and money (or lack thereof!) while demonstrating techniques for feeling successful and inspired even when the day's writing isn't going well. Funny, thoughtful, and always lively, Word Work will give any writer, beginner or pro, a road map to greater productivity, confidence, and satisfaction.
In Word Work, Bruce Holland Rogers writes not about how to write, or how to publish, but about how to be a writer. Claiming to be "extraordinarily gifted with neuroses, even for a writer," Rogers is well-practiced in such writerly pursuits as procrastination, self-doubt, and rejection. Thus, he is perfectly able to write from experience. Rogers's tone is friendly, anecdotal, low-key. In each essay, he contemplates some aspect of the writing life, from writer's block (for which he recommends "atomizing" a writing project, by breaking it down into minute parts) to writing rituals; from quitting one's day job ("depends on how important writing is to you and how seriously you take your own death") to writing workshops. You can almost see him holding up some aspect of the writing life--procrastination, say--between his fingertips and his thumb, turning and examining it from all angles, then musing about how to deal with it. Good news: there are benefits, he discovers, to such impediments as depression, negative thinking, and trying to write with children in the house. --Jane Steinberg
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