Writing Your Way: Creating a Writing Process That Works for You

by Don Fry

Writers write the way they were taught, which may not suit them at all, making their writing slow, painful, and not what they want to say. Writing Your Way shows you how to create your own unique writing process that magnifies your strengths and avoids your weaknesses. It shows you a multitude of ways to do the five key stages: Idea, Gather, Organize, Draft, and Revise. You can then design your own collection of techniques that work for you. You'll write clearer, faster, and more powerfully, with less effort and suffering.

The second half of this book shows you how to create and modify your own voice, one that sounds like the real you, that sounds the way you want agents and publishers and readers to experience you.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2012

Reviews

[Dawn Lennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot to offer non-fiction writers, particularly those writing for magazines, newspapers, and blogs, as well as non-fiction book writers.

It provides a useful and simple process for writing along with a relaxed tone that reinforces the importance of writing your way in a voice you've chosen. Fry notes lots of the rules our English teachers taught us and then frees us of from them in responsible ways.

I was fascinated by the fact that he wrote the book based on hiss blog posts. A fair number of bloggers have that goal and Fry explain his process, the choices he made, and the obstacles he overcame. There is a fair amount of repetition of points, but they aren't problematic since they reinforce important points. It helps you use the book as a reference when you're in the thick of your own writing.

Fry provides a helpful list of other good writing resources and accomplished non-fiction writers. He illustrates techniques with good and bad examples, often showing a good sense of humor and ability to do acrobatics with words.

I'm glad I found this book and plan to put it to good using for my future writing projects.

[Bruce DeSilva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don Fry begins his wise and practical book of writing advice this way: “Here’s a radical idea: You can escape your teachers. You can write in ways suited to you, rather than ways you were taught.”

In “Writing Your Way,” he offers hundreds upon hundreds of the writing tools complied over a lifetime of teaching, of careful reading, and of observing the professional writers who flock to him for advice. And then he demonstrates how to make use of the ones that work for YOU while ignoring the rest.

Great writing coaches are as scarce as Tar Heels fans at a Blue Devils pep rally. Fry, former head of the writing and ethics faculties at the prestigious Poynter Institute, is one of the greatest of all time. I’m a professional writer with 40 years of journalism and two novels behind me, but I’ve never stopped learning from him–and never will.

Whether you are a novice or a professional, this book will make you a better writer.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3½ stars] If you're wondering whether or not to read this book, start with deciding if you're in the target audience. Fry says he meant this book for "nonfiction writers who are not journalists." He talks a lot about working with editors, so I'm thinking journalists might be part of his audience anyway. But if you're a would-be novelist, while you'll probably find something useful in here, your time might be better spent reading books focused on fiction writing.

Fry aims to present a range of writing techniques with the intention that the reader pick through them and put together a personalized writing process. I thought the book did have a slight "list" feel to it: one technique following another, on and on (it started out as individual blog posts, which probably contributed to that feeling). The techniques are organized by what I think is his own process, from having an idea, through developing and researching it, to writing and revising it. He also has a chapter on creating your writing voice; one of the only books I've found that has practical suggestions on developing it. Reading the whole book start to finish took a bit of effort on my part, probably because of that "list" feel. You wouldn't usually read a blog straight through from its first posts without taking breaks to read other things, and I think this book would also digest better when read in small doses. Nonfiction writers, especially those intending to write magazine articles and/or blog posts, are likely to find this book useful; others may wish to borrow the book first to see if it's right for them.

[Lisa M · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the first portion of the book, Fry covers:

Writing Process
1. Idea
2. Gather
3. Organize
4. Draft
5. Revise

The second portion of the book covers creating your writing voice.

I didn't feel like I came away from this book with a clear plan for creating a writing process that works for me.

[David Brzezinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot of valuable information in this book. Unfortunately, I did not really see how a lot of it applied to me. The main focus of the book appears to be on improving writing for people who write articles, biographies, interviews, and the like. None of it, while practical, felt like it could be applied to fiction writing, at least, that's what I thought.

[Bjarne Siewertsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had it's moments. Chapter seven on writing drafts is the best chapter in the book, but the chapter on creating a voice is great as well.

[Angela Counter · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a ton of practical advice for nonfiction writers in this book. Interviewing tips that have already saved me lots of effort.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as non-fiction writing, this is really good resource. It's got some good tips for interviewing, and I like his comments on the writing process. It is not so good for fiction writing. I don't know if I'll ever use any of it.

[Kirstian L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for ch 7 and five for the chapter on voice!

[Darcy Conroy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like many others, I came to this book as a long form, fiction writer, so I found little of use in it. The writer does say, in the first chapter, that the information should apply to all writers, but very little of it does - which is fine.
I gave it 2 stars, not because it didn't apply to me, but because I felt that, even for feature writers, it tries to be too much for too wide an audience. If the reader needs to be told that he needs to have an idea, get his grammar right and research his articles, then he's barely competent to begin a career in feature writing, and won't have enough articles to assess, to start considering his 'voice. Worrying about 'voice' seems a bit too much pressure to put on such a beginning writer, while the first part seems too introductory for anyone wanting to polish their craft, and would probably be put down before they got to the applicable part.

[Gloria]

Basically skimmed this for now, but am annotating this so I remember to find it again. Contains useful advice for arriving at a method of writing that is unique to you.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

First-rate advice for experienced writers.