The Blurb:
Has your motivation to write flown out of the window? Do feelings of self-doubt creep in and haunt your writing day? Looking for a way to beat the doubts into submission? Award-winning author and writing coach Wendy H. Jones shows you how, with 366 glorious exercises you can use to boost creativity and change the way you think and feel about your writing. Techniques that can easily be incorporated into your day, becoming part of your writing routine. It’s time to change the way you think and feel, in order to set your creativity free.
Steven's Review:
This book seeks to help writers and aspiring writers revolutionise their writing one creative step at a time. The author and writing coach Wendy H. Jones helps us through the exercises in her book to boost creativity and change the way we think and feel about writing. The book aims to guide us through different techniques that can be easily used to become part of a writing routine.
The author writes that the book should act as a ‘motivational bomb’. And you know what? It does just that. Wendy suggests various ways of using the book and I tried two methods. I started from the beginning and worked my way through and that was okay, but I found the more stimulating approach was to dip into it and complete the tasks I found there. Of course, I could have dipped in and found that I didn’t want to do the tasks I’d randomly discovered. I could if I’d wanted, kept turning the pages until I came across something more suited. I think, though, that this approach is missing the point of the book because the idea is to leave your comfort zone and not to search for what you recognise as being you.
I didn’t give myself over, as Frankenfurter says, ‘to absolute pleasure’ but I did have a lot of fun dipping in and just doing whatever I found. Some of which I had already been engaged with and this helped to bolster my self belief a little. Okay sometimes I felt a little smug. ‘Oh, I do that already.’
It’s essential, when you engage with this book that you leave your usual need to analyse and critique at the door, that you abandon any hang ups about being told what to do or not being able to dance or feeling too self conscious to write a silly story. Just do what it says.
Wendy’s register is very casual, at times chatty, and her style of writing is very personable, which in itself is hard to do without crossing into patronising. It never does.
When you’re going to use this publication remember that you’re probably reading it because you have to, embrace the friendliness of the tone and Motivation Matters will work. It did for me. I hadn’t produced anything of length for 6 years and now having dipped in and out of Wendy’s guidance, I’m writing well over a thousand words every day. The process has been cathartic and from time to time I will revisit some of my favourite tasks: Off the Grid; Free Writing; Stop Right Now and many more.
When Off the Grid recently I found myself in the cemetery visiting my parents’ grave. It was a gorgeous day and I was alone with the silence and a wonderful view out across the Clyde valley. I learned that what I had thought to be silence was full of tiny noises from the far off city and close by among the surrounding trees that were shifting in the warm breeze. I perched on a bench to begin with then walked a little before sitting on the grass all the time using my senses, scribbling notes and talking into my phone’s recorder. All in all, I stayed for almost two hours free writing. My fingers had a very satisfying ache to them when I said goodbye to Mum and Dad.
The Author:
Award Winning Author Wendy H. Jones lives in Scotland, and her police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Shona McKenzie, is set in the beautiful city of Dundee, Scotland. Wendy has led a varied and adventurous life. Her love for adventure led to her joining the Royal Navy to undertake nurse training. After six years in the Navy, she joined the Army where she served as an Officer for a further 17 years. This took her all over the world including Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. Much of her spare time is now spent travelling around the UK, and lands much further afield. As well as nursing Wendy also worked for many years in Academia. This led to publication in academic textbooks and journals.
Killer's Countdown was her first novel and the first book in the Shona McKenzie Mystery series. Killer's Crew won the Books Go Social Book of the Year 2107. There are now six books in this series with number six, Killer's Crypt, released in August 2017. The Dagger's Curse is the first book in The Fergus and Flora Mysteries for Young Adults. This book is currently shortlisted for the Woman Alive Magazine Readers Choice Award Book of the Year. She is also a highly successful marketer and she shares her methods in the book, Power Packed Book Marketing.
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