Author: Gerald M. Weinberg
ISBN: 093263365X
With the advent of self-publishing there is a current vogue for writing manuals and writers’ aids. Most usually take the same approach with little variations. However, Gerald M. Weinberg has come up with a creative approach with his Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. He offers alternatives to your writing habits that he has experimented with and that have proven to be quite beneficial to him in his career. Weinberg has been writing books and teaching students how to write for forty years, and he is a leading author and “consultant’s consultant" in the computer industry.
In Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method he draws an analogy to the stone-by-stone method of building fieldstone structures. If you are not familiar with fieldstones, these are generally used as for property lines and fences, although they can also be used in constructing various other structures.
Building a fieldstone structure requires gathering the right stones in a step-by-step process, as fieldstones vary in size, color, texture, shape and density. Similarly, writing a book requires the gathering of ideas or as Weinberg succinctly reminds us, “snatches of writing, photos, diagrams, quotations, pictures, and references that you find interesting." Weinberg’s fieldstone method also uses the “stones of time," wherein chunks of writing time are set aside, varying in quality and duration, in order to effectively write. In this way you can avoid writer’s block and you can realize your writing projects with greater ease.
Weinberg displays his deep writing knowledge throughout the book’s twenty chapters that commences with the most important of Weinberg’s writing lesson where he states that you can write anything you wish in any style, however, it is imperative that you never attempt to write what you don’t care about. This is different then the usual rule where we are told to write about what you know.
From here Weinberg explores how to banish writer’s block, gathering and recycling ideas, words, phrases that you can call up for future use in any fiction or non-fiction you may write. We are also provided with several exercises in order to reinforce the many new principles that Weinberg exposes to us.
There is a chapter dealing with the many tools available to assist us in our gathering as the Internet, computers, notecards, pads, highlighters and sticky notes, and other technological aids that will make our writing life simpler and more rewarding.
Other sections illustrate how to discard unwanted material in the same manner that we discard stones that don’t fit or suit our structure, how to trigger our memory, organizing our work, shaping ideas and words that fit, knowing when to stop, and what happens after we are finished.
Weinberg has written a clever writing manual. On one level it is highly readable and on another it is packed with excellent insights into how to effectively perfect the writing process with less pain and much more enjoyment. |
