My Writing Year: Making Sense of Being a Writer
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About this ebook
A powerful book about writing and the writing process, this book will motivate both beginning and professional writers to sit down and write as swiftly as they can to generate ideas or to break out of a writer's block. Writing will become a joyful act instead of a chore. All aspects of writing are covered, from setting deadlines, overcoming rejection, revising, getting feedback, persevering against all odds, contending with interruptions, and much, much more.
Joseph Sutton
Joseph Sutton was born in Brooklyn and raised in Hollywood. He played football at the University of Oregon and graduated with a degree in philosophy. He earned a teaching credential and a degree in history at Cal State University Los Angeles and taught high school history and English for many years. Sutton, who has been writing for more than 50 years, has published over two dozen books. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.
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My Writing Year - Joseph Sutton
MY WRITING YEAR
Making Sense of Being a Writer
by
Joseph Sutton
Copyright by Joseph Sutton
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Week 1 - Start Anywhere
Week 2 - Send Me a Hundred Pages
Week 3 - Writing vs. Experiencing Life
Week 4 - This Writer's Mantra
Week 5 - Sit Your Ass Down
Week 6 - Just Write, Don't Stop
Week 7 - A Question to Answer
Week 8 - Why I Write
Week 9 - When Ideas Come a-Knockin'
Week 10 - Fame
Week 11 - Writing in My Car
Week 12 - Slow, Man, Slow is What I Am
Week 13 - Confidence and the Writing Process
Week 14 - Writing and Walking Go Together
Week 15 - The Right Time to Write
Week 16 - Interruptions
Week 17 - Deadlines are Lifelines
Week 18 - Writing as Therapy
Week 19 - Writing and the Subconscious
Week 20 - Writing Quotations
Week 21 - A Beginning Writer's Voice Emerges
Week 22 - This Writer Learns from His Wife
Week 23 - A Story from Out of the Blue
Week 24 - Overcoming Writer's Block
Week 25 - I Consider Myself the Luckiest Writer on the Face of the Earth
Week 26 - A Typical Day in This Writer's Life
Week 27 - Thoughts on the Writing Process
Week 28 - The Secret to Writing
Week 29 - The Pen vs. The Computer
Week 30 - All Writing is Connected to Writing
Week 31 - Writing Advice for Non-Writers
Week 32 - Writing and Sickness
Week 33 - A Ramble into the Crevices of My Mind
Week 34 - One Way to Get a Writing Project Started
Week 35 - Don't Think, Keep on Writing
Week 36 - The Complete Story
Week 37 - Revision
Week 38 - Write Swiftly, Fast, Rapidly, Quickly
Week 39 - Rejections
Week 40 - How to Write and Love Doing It
Week 41 - My Reason for Self-Publishing
Week 42 - Two Interviews
Week 43 - Stick to Writing
Week 44 - Feedback
Week 45 - The Limitless Future for Writers
Week 46 - Advertisements for Myself
Week 47 - Proofreading
Week 48 - This Writer's Resolutions
Week 49 - I've Got Rhythm
Week 50 - Important Writing Quotes
Week 51 - Why I Write II
Week 52 - Signing Off
About the Author
Other Titles by Joseph Sutton
Connect with Joseph Sutton
Introduction
Think of it, Joseph Sutton has penned this powerful little book to try to make sense out of why anyone would want to be a writer. There are 52 entries, one for each week in the year, that deal with everything from Why I Write
to Writing as Therapy
to Overcoming Writer’s Block
to Rejection
and how to manage it.
Other entries include:
Writing and the Subconscious
When Ideas Come a-Knockin’
How to Write and Love Doing It
Deadlines are Lifelines
The Secret to Writing
There are many more entries to help the beginner and the professional stay focused and do the job of writing, day after day. Sutton’s favorite author, William Saroyan, said this is what a writer must do: If you practice your art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.
There is even a magic elixir
formula to give you strength as you work your way toward your finished writing product.
Each page in this little jewel will help push you toward your writing goal of honing in on your own voice and getting yourself published. Sutton offers us his secrets to good writing and to making sense out of a profession with many personal pleasures but with little remuneration.
My Writing Year will set you free, free to write wherever your thoughts take you and to overcome most of the obstacles that might otherwise stop you in your tracks at first attempt.
—Donald S. Ellis, Publisher
Week 1 - Start Anywhere
For the past few months I’ve been experiencing a dry spell in my writing because I’ve been busy promoting my latest book Write Now! On the Road to Getting Published or How I Learned to Sell My Book. I’ve also been sending out query letters by snail mail and e-mail to a host of agents trying to convince them to read two unpublished novels of mine. Add to that, I’ve been watching the most exciting basketball team I’ve ever seen—the Golden State Warriors. Instead of sitting at