If You're Writing, Let's Talk: A Road Map Past Writers' Blocks from Page One to the End

by Joel Saltzman

Book Overview

Join author Joel Saltzman and six of his writing students as they journey through a ten-week writing workshop. Discover how they find solutions to their writing difficulties, and get beyond self-doubts and creative dilemmas. The author serves as guide, guru, and writing coach, providing the wisdom, courage, and occasional one-liners that will get you writing your best work ever. You'll learn how to: tell a story use your faults to maximum advantage...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761508589
• ISBN13: 9780761508588
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
• Length: 161 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Like sitting down with a few friends......

This excellent book by Joel Saltzman chronicles the trials and tribulations of a group of writing students through a 10 week course with him. This is like a dream course I wish I could have partaken in. The writer's are supposed to write freely during the days they are not in his class -- which takes place at his home rather than an a cold, impersonal classroom. Some of these writers don't try very hard at it and give up easily. Some are gritting their teeth through bouts of writer's block and insecurity. Some are so captivated by their art that they go on to write through their blocks and fears, conquering the challenge writing brings to us all. There are six students. Three master their craft enough to complete their stories, which are published in the back of the book.At the beginning of this review I said this book was like sitting down with a few friends. Here's why, the class most closely resembles a writer's group in that the participants bring in their work and read it to the group where it then is critiqued by their teacher and their fellow students. In reading this, you recognize things in yourself and your writing that need improvement as well as those that you have accomplished. A couple times you will smile and say, ah, I've done that. These are writers with fears and accomplishments that you can enjoy identifying with. And ... the whole thing is written in a style that makes you feel you are there, an observer of the group.Now! Buy this book -- sorry mine will never be for sale. Get in gear, and write! This book will make you feel that you can.

For the workshop-deprived, something to fill the void

Somewhere I read that more neophyte writers are writing well these days thanks to the popularization of writers' workshops. That's more bad news for those of us with inferiority complexes, who want to go somewhere with the scribbling but live wagon trains away from places where workshops flourish. How in the world can we competitively buff our stuff without a seasoned writer and a dozen deadly honest classmates looking on? The next best thing is to rely on self-help writers' books, a burgeoning genre of which this compares with some of the better examples like Anne Lamott's "Bird By Bird" and Rita Mae Brown's "Starting From Scratch." What I like about "If You're Writing, Let's Talk" is its emphasis on the revision process. For all its supercool LA chatter, the book offers a good lesson in critical thinking

Literally a NOVEL approach to teaching the craft of writing.

Joel Saltzman's new book, If You're Writing, Let's Talk, reads like a novel, full of drama, characters and conflict, even as it lights the way for writers to follow on their own journeys to publication. It's the story of six students in a ten-week writing workshop Saltzman taught and their trek through the problems all writers face. Quotes from famous authors on nearly every page remind us that even the greats face the same problems we all do. As author, teacher, lecturer and sometime comedian, Saltzman has written for television and won awards from the American Film Festival, The Long Island Film Festival and the U.S. Forbes Playwriting Awards