Harvey Stanbrough

A New Era Begins: Writing Intensives and More

Hi Folks, Now that I’ve retired as a copyeditor and resigned my position as General Manager of the Universe, I have more time for my own writing. Fortunately, I can also focus on teaching writing to those who are serious about becoming professional writers. Most of my mechanics and techniques seminars (the ones I’ve taught all these years in Tucson, Bisbee, Green Valley and Willcox) are available online in my Audio Lecture Series. If you want … Read more

The Professional Writer: My Own Writing Process

Hi Folks, I have this pasted across all three of my computer screens as a picture on the desktop (21″ editing monitor, 14″ business computer monitor, 12″ writing ‘puter monitor). I don’t write every day, but I *want* to write every day, and I do write most days for at least one hour. Usually that becomes two or three hours, and when it wants to, I let it. If you’d like a copy of this (it’s … Read more

The Professional Writer: Overcoming Writers’ Fear

Hi Folks, Know how I can tell immediately that I’m in a room full of writers? I listen. It takes all of maybe two minutes, in a room full of writers, to hear several excuses about why they can’t write. Most of these begin with “Oh I’d love to write more often, but I have a job; So and So is expecting me to [help him move, mow the yard, fill in the blank]; I have … Read more

The Professional Writer: Practicing Your Writing

Hi Folks, First, a housekeeping note. If any of you want any of my nonfiction books on writing, poetry collections, or fiction, you can get them all for 1/2 price today and tomorrow at Smashwords. To see what’s available, just visit My Smashwords Page, scroll down, make your selections and check out. You can purchase Kindle, Nook/Apple or PDF files all in one place at Smashwords. Now let’s get down to business. Writing is the only … Read more

The Professional Writer: Pseudonyms & Personas

Hi Folks, Okay, this post is gonna be about The Care and Cleaning of Pseudonyms and Personas, Part I: The Pen Name. As usual, I’ll start with a definition. A pseudonym is a pen name. It’s something you use when you want to publish something without allowing others to know you’re the author, or perhaps you want to let them know selectively. Some writers use a pseudonym because doing so makes them feel cool or makes … Read more

The Professional Writer: Writing into the Dark, Part II

Hi Folks, Originally I didn’t intend to revisit this topic, but I received a great deal of discussion on it. If you followed the comments, you saw the tip of the iceberg. The rest were to me directly via email. And that’s fine, really, but if you could leave a comment in the comment form below, it would make search engines place my website on a higher level of consciousness or something, especially the god-like Google. … Read more

The Professional Writer: Writing into the Dark

Hi Folks, I mentioned in an earlier post that as part of my retraining as a writer, I’m learning to trust my subconscious to write the story. I want to be clear: this is not the “freewriting” technique most of us have heard about. In freewriting, the writer (usually a student) is told to ignore or “don’t worry about” grammar or syntax or punctuation or capitalization. The task is just to get the words on paper … Read more

The Professional Writer: Story Starters

Hi Folks, Yeah, this is kind’a like my previous post, or at least it looks like it on the surface. The previous post was Ideas and this one is Story Starters. In the previous post I talked about where ideas (story starters) come from. In this one I’m going to actually give you some story starters. Please feel free to use any of these that make you want to finish the story. They are all original … Read more

The Professional Writer: Ideas

Hi Folks, Welcome! Let’s ask and answer that timeless question: Where do writers get ideas? Harlan Ellison, upon being asked that very question, said he gets all his ideas exclusively from a small shop in Schenectady. Would-be (wannabe) writers don’t want to hear the real answer, yet here it is again: Where do we get ideas? Everywhere. You just have to pay attention. You’re a writer. Every moment you should be listening and looking for ideas, … Read more

The Professional Writer: Retraining

Hi Folks, Let’s get right into it. What keyed my own retraining and my desire to share this and the other posts in the Professional Writer series? I recently read Dean Wesley Smith’s very short book, How to Write a Novel in Ten Days. He ghosted a complete 70,000 word novel, under contract, in ten days. He blogged about the experience as he did it, then published those blog posts as the book. And yes, he … Read more