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Dr. Cindy Shearer - Writing Coach and Editor |
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What are the tools that writers need? Tangible and not-so-tangible tools. Tangible tools are the hammers and nails that writers need to put their work together. We begin to acquire many of these tools early on in life. What a sentence is, how to construct a paragraph, techniques for organizing our thoughts are some of the first writing tools we get from others. We add to them tools of grammar, punctuation and manuscript form and style. Tangible tools can also be elements of craft that take ordinary, competent writing and make it something more--something that a reader can really live in. Techniques that allow us to pay attention to sound, image, perspectives and storytelling in our writing can be very important tools.But this book talks more about the not-so-tangible tools, what I think of as "precepts of awareness", that writers can benefit from and need. I believe these precepts and have created this book as a model of how we can use ways of being aware as writing tools. Using these precepts of awareness can effect what and how we write. They can offer us a new approach or a different attitude, and can help us develop our writing practice.They invite us to be curious.They allow us to stretch and bend.They remind us not to get discouraged and help us pay attention to what's really important. Many people think of writing as a rote and mechanical process. They have this attitude because the experience of writing is not real for them. They are not aware when they write, that they can know themselves differently or more fully and that others really do experience them. When writers bring together tangible and not-so-tangible tools in their writing, genuine expression and actual communication are possible. Sometimes something beautiful or the making of art results. |
Tool One: Writing is word and image working together. Tool Two: Writing is real. Tool Three: Writing is the complex made simple. Tool Four: Writing is play. Tool Five: Writing is a process of translation. Tool Six: Writing is talking. Tool Seven: Writing is mending. Tool Eight: Writing is relationship. Tool Nine: Writing is being at home. Tool Ten: Writing is art.
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