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Bang the Keys: Four Steps to a Lifelong Writing Practice
Attention aspiring and working writers alike!
Finish your work in four easy steps with this explosion of inspiration.
How can aspiring writers-whether aiming for a short story, novel, screenplay, or nonfiction work-gain the confidence they need to follow through on their creative visions....
The answer can be found in this book by a writing coach and university writing professor whose "Bang the Keys" workshop stems from an innovative four-step system that offers practical advice for demonstrated results every time.
Step 1: Begin with the strongest idea.
Step 2: Arrange the work into a concrete shape.
Step 3: Nurture the project with love, so that others can love it, too.
Step 4: Go finish, and then let it go so it may live independently in the world.
Also included are practical writing exercises that will give readers the tools and the inspiration to finish the writing projects they start ... or bust their fingers trying!
Finish your work in four easy steps with this explosion of inspiration.
How can aspiring writers-whether aiming for a short story, novel, screenplay, or nonfiction work-gain the confidence they need to follow through on their creative visions....
The answer can be found in this book by a writing coach and university writing professor whose "Bang the Keys" workshop stems from an innovative four-step system that offers practical advice for demonstrated results every time.
Step 1: Begin with the strongest idea.
Step 2: Arrange the work into a concrete shape.
Step 3: Nurture the project with love, so that others can love it, too.
Step 4: Go finish, and then let it go so it may live independently in the world.
Also included are practical writing exercises that will give readers the tools and the inspiration to finish the writing projects they start ... or bust their fingers trying!
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
11 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 19, 2015
A pretty solid collection of writing tips and helpful advice, written in a fun, breezy style of asides (darlings!) A useful addition to a writer's library.
June 17, 2016
In many ways, this is an unpleasant book to read, being crude, deliberately immoral and decadent, and filled with all kinds of New Age meditation and the sort of assumptions about the reader that make this work clearly aimed at hipsters on the East or West Coasts. As is the case with many books, the author reveals a lot about herself in the writing of the book, and the result is often unpleasant. For anyone who has aspirations of writing and has remotely high-minded views about decency and moral probity, this book offers a lot of crap and a few pretty flowers and maybe some psychedelic mushrooms for the reader’s trouble. That is not to say that the book is without value, for it does offer insights, even if not always novel ones, but rather that the book is not really worthwhile unless the reader is sympathetic with the writer’s worldview, which is not the case with every reader, even those readers who are passionate about writing [1]. Given that the writer makes it a point of reminding the reader that one must remember the reader in one’s writings, it is more remarkable that the writer assumed that all would-be writers are people like her—decadent and crude—which is a bad assumption to make.
The structure and organization of this book is mostly straightforward, and the author considers this (accurately) to be a textual version of a workshop. One of the starred reviews included before the proper beginning of the book gives an accurate and flattering summary of the book’s contents and approach: “Bang the Keys is about purging those internal obstacles that prevent us from getting our stories out, or that clip them along the way. Writing can look like magic to everyone but the writer: to her it looks like the courage to sit in front of a blank screen and the discipline to stay there. The most dashing writers, even Kerouac, can be identified not just by their genius, but by their work ethic—the doggedness with which, even when the blank page looks like a tombstone, they sit down and bang the keys (x).” As might be expected, the banging of the keys is a double entendre, not only literally referring to the banging of keys on a computer keyboard or typewriter, but also an acronym for a four-step process that the author daringly compares to the meaning of the Hebrew letters in the tetragrammaton: begin, assemble, nurture, and go. In slightly more than two hundred pages and nineteen chapters the author offers various tips for meditation, writing either rave or scathing reviews of one’s own writing, creating artificial deadlines, making writing fun, interviewing one’s characters, writing dream journals, beginning with the ending and working backward, getting to know about the approaches of characters towards sex and money, approaching writing from a foreign style to one’s own, focusing on elements of plot and the narrative flow of the story and questions of narrative and genre, and finding writing buddies for mutual encouragement, among other topics.
The result is a book that offers nuggets of insight along with the pages of tedious self-referential naval gazing and portraits of societal decay from the point of view of the demimonde. Some of the nuggets include: yet more evidence that writers are a particularly and often spectacularly neurotic group of people, if any more evidence was necessary, plenty of evidence of the desire of writers (including the writer of the book) to emulate God without giving respect to God, or living His ways, and the fact that writers with their sensitivity often require the support and encouragement of other writers, given the frequency of self-criticism and the reality that the lives and behavior of many creative writers are worthy of intense and well-deserved moral critique. This book is an encouragement to writers that in order to write well, one has to practice writing, rather than simply read about it or pontificate about it. The same is true for moral decency or anything else that is worthy of practice—it is meant to be practiced, not merely known. Reading this book will encourage one to write, and provide plenty of writing exercises to spur a writer’s dormant creative juices, and that alone makes it of some worth.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
The structure and organization of this book is mostly straightforward, and the author considers this (accurately) to be a textual version of a workshop. One of the starred reviews included before the proper beginning of the book gives an accurate and flattering summary of the book’s contents and approach: “Bang the Keys is about purging those internal obstacles that prevent us from getting our stories out, or that clip them along the way. Writing can look like magic to everyone but the writer: to her it looks like the courage to sit in front of a blank screen and the discipline to stay there. The most dashing writers, even Kerouac, can be identified not just by their genius, but by their work ethic—the doggedness with which, even when the blank page looks like a tombstone, they sit down and bang the keys (x).” As might be expected, the banging of the keys is a double entendre, not only literally referring to the banging of keys on a computer keyboard or typewriter, but also an acronym for a four-step process that the author daringly compares to the meaning of the Hebrew letters in the tetragrammaton: begin, assemble, nurture, and go. In slightly more than two hundred pages and nineteen chapters the author offers various tips for meditation, writing either rave or scathing reviews of one’s own writing, creating artificial deadlines, making writing fun, interviewing one’s characters, writing dream journals, beginning with the ending and working backward, getting to know about the approaches of characters towards sex and money, approaching writing from a foreign style to one’s own, focusing on elements of plot and the narrative flow of the story and questions of narrative and genre, and finding writing buddies for mutual encouragement, among other topics.
The result is a book that offers nuggets of insight along with the pages of tedious self-referential naval gazing and portraits of societal decay from the point of view of the demimonde. Some of the nuggets include: yet more evidence that writers are a particularly and often spectacularly neurotic group of people, if any more evidence was necessary, plenty of evidence of the desire of writers (including the writer of the book) to emulate God without giving respect to God, or living His ways, and the fact that writers with their sensitivity often require the support and encouragement of other writers, given the frequency of self-criticism and the reality that the lives and behavior of many creative writers are worthy of intense and well-deserved moral critique. This book is an encouragement to writers that in order to write well, one has to practice writing, rather than simply read about it or pontificate about it. The same is true for moral decency or anything else that is worthy of practice—it is meant to be practiced, not merely known. Reading this book will encourage one to write, and provide plenty of writing exercises to spur a writer’s dormant creative juices, and that alone makes it of some worth.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
September 4, 2010
This book tells writers how to identify the kind of writer they are, set goals and deadlines, find a writing partner, use writing journals, meditate, identify the type of story right for them and improve their writing through advice, exercises and sources of additional readings.
This book’s author is a writing instructor and a published writer herself. It has been her practice to pair up writers in her classes so that one serves as morale booster and advisor to the other.
Computers have changed the way writers write. She cites Lee Siegel’s book, “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” commenting that “Essentially, we are fast becoming a mean-spirited race of superficial idiots who are disconnected from each other and from ourselves, and can no long distinguish between gossip and news!” Needless to say, finishing a piece of writing requires discipline. Many modern writers become easily distracted by texting, emailing and surfing. The author gives tips on marking goals on the calendar, setting aside writing time and imagining the kind of counsel one’s own favorite author would give about how to proceed and commit to a project.
The author provides a mnemonic device (P.L.O.T.W.I.C.H) to remind writers how to develop a strong plot: Premise, Links, Obstacles, Transformation, Wants, Impediments, Conflict and Heat. Overall, she discusses a general plan for writers denoted by the acronym B.A.N.G.: Begin, Arrange, Nurture and Go. This is why she says, “Bang the Keys.”
This book’s author is a writing instructor and a published writer herself. It has been her practice to pair up writers in her classes so that one serves as morale booster and advisor to the other.
Computers have changed the way writers write. She cites Lee Siegel’s book, “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” commenting that “Essentially, we are fast becoming a mean-spirited race of superficial idiots who are disconnected from each other and from ourselves, and can no long distinguish between gossip and news!” Needless to say, finishing a piece of writing requires discipline. Many modern writers become easily distracted by texting, emailing and surfing. The author gives tips on marking goals on the calendar, setting aside writing time and imagining the kind of counsel one’s own favorite author would give about how to proceed and commit to a project.
The author provides a mnemonic device (P.L.O.T.W.I.C.H) to remind writers how to develop a strong plot: Premise, Links, Obstacles, Transformation, Wants, Impediments, Conflict and Heat. Overall, she discusses a general plan for writers denoted by the acronym B.A.N.G.: Begin, Arrange, Nurture and Go. This is why she says, “Bang the Keys.”
November 20, 2013
This book is most everything you'd want in a book about writing. Lots of exercises, lots of food for thought, and it's readable too. I thought it had pretty sound advice. But I had to take a star off for the annoying cutesy writing style. Sure it's personable, but it got really repetitive, not to mention condescending, being called "dear" "baby" and "darling" over and over. Once a style like that becomes predictable, it's no longer amusing but rather eye-roll worthy, and in this case, it got stale after a third of the book.
June 13, 2013
I loved the quirky, upbeat tone of this book. Just because the tone is casual doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile. Lots of exercises to get a writer through any project, from the brainstorming stage to completion. Techniques include everything from tarot cards to meditation (including a meditation technique that I think I can actually do). Can't wait to try a few of these exercises with my next writing project.
June 12, 2012
Jill Dearman's Bang the Keys is a wonderful read. There are many tips from this writing coach/University writing teacher that are not just useful but important to anyone inspired to write. I will however need to read this book again in the future but only because there was a lot of information to retain and I believe I could benefit from giving this a second look.
January 21, 2010
Dearman inspires and motivates with her fun and understanding take on what it's like to be a writer in the 21st century. Valuable writing exercises abound and lots of strategies to eliminate distractions and go for your writing dreams. Great for writers of all genres.
July 26, 2010
This books has to be one of my favorite writing books. This isn't a book that you take from and then use and forget. The exersises can be used everytime you have a project to whatever extent you like.
Loved it.
Loved it.
July 12, 2016
Inspiring with some kick starters. I enjoyed the idea of writing backwards. I would take the dog for a walk and ponder how I would write a particular story or chapter if I began at its end. For non-fiction it read enthusiastically.
September 10, 2009
is motivating me to write
May 2, 2011
Good book on better writing.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews