Think Like a Writer – How to Write the Stories You See
Think Like a Writer (and Go from Perception to Page)
Think Like a Writer will corral your writing ideas—and saddle up the stories you’ve always wanted to write. Do you love language, and how words work to thrill, convince, dazzle, excite?
Every writer, whether a beginner or a veteran, has a combination of perspective, experience, and ability that produces a point of view that’s theirs alone. Think Like a Writer supplies tools, strategies, and prompts that will bring your unique perspective to life on the page.
Whether you tell your stories to your children, your business partners, your customers or the world, this book can help you tell them with eloquence, power, and persuasion. And in the voice that’s uniquely your own. With humor and clarity, Think Like a Writer will jump-start your writing work and writing play. Writing should be an exploration, a drawing from your well, not some clotted drudgery! (And sometimes you can even make a living doing that exploring.) Here’s what’s in the book:
Chapter 1: Don’t Muzzle (or Muffle) Your Writing Voice What is a writer’s voice? How do you cultivate your own? How your writing influences stake out your unique writing path. How your life perspectives feed life writing.
Chapter 2: A Writer’s Eyes Are Always Open What do writers see that others don’t? How can they open their eyes even wider? How to bring your vision to the page. Stories are everywhere! Where to turn when your writing voice is strangled. Developing a writing attitude.
Chapter 3: Slipping Through Various Writing Fences Writing genres. The mingled voices of business copywriting, fiction writing, travel writing, essay writing. Writing niches (and not having a niche).
Chapter 4: Writing Structures: Words, Sentences, Punctuation Marks—Oh My! The individual weight and feel of words: their textures, sounds, rhythms. Word choices, sentence sounds, how paragraphs work. The pleasures of punctuation. Grammar without grimacing. Writing short, writing humorously, writing with a sense of place. Writing through time. Editing.
Chapter 5: Writing Distractions and Their Discontents The stereotype of the suffering writer. Writing like there’s no tomorrow. Writing in the Internet age. Tools to soothe the savage writer. How to deal with writing distractions.
Chapter 6: Practical Matters/Resources Working with editors. Writing queries. Writing contests and writing collaborations. Writing tools, both software, and hardware. Reference links for both copywriters and fiction writers.
Read this book, and say, “Yes!” to your creativity.
Get a copy of Think Like a Writer and put your personality on the page.
Read, See and Write—Now!
About Tom Bentley (Silicon Valley, California Author)
Tom Bentley is a business writer and editor, an essayist, and a fiction writer. (He does not play banjo.) He's had hundreds of freelance pieces published-ranging from first-person essays to travel pieces to more journalistic subjects-in newspapers, magazines, and online.
He is the author of "All Roads Are Circles," a coming-of-age novel, Aftershock," set just after the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, "Swirled All the Way to the Shrub," set in Prohibition Boston, and "Flowering," a collection of short stories. His self-published book on finding and cultivating your writer's voice, "Think Like a Writer: How to Write the Stories You See" was published in June of 2015.
He would like you to pour him a Manhattan right at five.
You can see his lurid website confessions at www.tombentley.com
