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    How To Talk About Writing: A Fundamental Shift in Perspective
    How To Talk About Writing: A Fundamental Shift in Perspective
    How To Talk About Writing: A Fundamental Shift in Perspective
    Ebook58 pages44 minutes

    How To Talk About Writing: A Fundamental Shift in Perspective

    By Barbara Turner-Vesselago and Nicola-Jane le Breton

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    About this ebook

    With insight and clarity, Barbara Turner-Vesselago distils the essentials of ‘How To Talk About Writing’ into six revolutionary discoveries. This book provides invaluable advice for all who long to respond constructively to writers who seek their input, but who don’t know how or where to begin.

    Seasoned writing mentors and editors will be inspired to abandon old paradigms of editorial criticism. Those new to giving feedback will find straightforward tips—easy to comprehend and instantly rewarding to apply.

    Barbara Turner-Vesselago is the author of two successful writing books and a mentor to hundreds of published authors worldwide. Informative and user-friendly, this is a vital guide for writers’ groups, university seminars, and even for frank and informal one-on-one discussions between friends.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVivid Publishing
    Release dateJul 1, 2019
    ISBN9781925952179
    How To Talk About Writing: A Fundamental Shift in Perspective
    Author

    Barbara Turner-Vesselago

    Since 1990, Barbara Turner-Vesselago has led highly effective Freefall Writing workshops throughout the English-speaking world. An expert in modern literature, she has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has taught at universities in England, Canada, the USA, Australia and Nigeria. Barbara’s novel, No News But Kindness, was chosen as a finalist for the Chapter/Robertson Davies Book Prize. Her comprehensive book about writing, Writing Without a Parachute: The Art of Freefall, was published by Finch Publishing and is available here in Australia. The sequel, Freefall Into Fiction: Finding Form, was published by Jessica Kingsley in 2017.

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      Book preview

      How To Talk About Writing - Barbara Turner-Vesselago

      TURNER-VESSELAGO

      Foreword

      This splendid guide lights the way for all of us who long to give helpful feedback to writers asking for our input, but who don’t always know how or where to begin.

      As a writing teacher, editor and publishing consultant whose mentoring approach has been transformed by the principles that Barbara Turner-Vesselago outlines in this book, I can vouch for the power of moving away from old paradigms of criticism and toward giving feedback that is sincere, perceptive and honours another’s creative journey.

      Facilitating community writing workshops for over six years in a small town on the south coast of Western Australia, I witnessed the profound effect of creating a culture around writing founded (as is recommended here) on encouragement and respect. Some of my students had no prior experience in creative writing. A few were barely literate, while others had decades of experience as professional writers. And yet many of them kept returning to my classes and telling me that for the first time in years, or ever, they felt inspired and hopeful about their writing.

      One of my students used to sit through my classes with tears trickling down her cheeks. At first I worried, thinking I’d said something to upset her. But when I spoke to her privately after class, I discovered her tears were not of sadness but of homecoming: of finding a safe place in which she could express and explore her creativity and her life stories without fear of inappropriate judgment. Another student, with a long and accomplished background in journalism, once wrote that my workshops had opened fresh summer breezes onto wintry landscapes and helped her bid farewell to the strictures of the sub-editorial craft.

      I believe I was able to create these safe spaces for other writers to grow and blossom because of what I had learned from my longtime mentor, Barbara Turner-Vesselago: the power of focusing on what works and of having faith that each of us, with the right kind of feedback, can find and nurture an original writing voice that flows freely from within.

      As a child, I loved to write. Stories poured out of me like bees from a hive, buzzing with life and color. But along the way, like so many, I received the wrong kind of feedback. I remember, in high school as a thirteen-year-old, receiving back an angst-filled short story covered in my English teacher’s red pen.

      Words and sentences were scratched out in red biro with scrawled admonitions like too melodramatic!, implausible, cliché and excessive. As the story was the result of a genuine desire to write creatively and authentically, these words seemed not only to damn my dream of being a published author one day, but also to label me as someone with problems who needed help.

      After that experience the bees retreated and the hive of endless story-honey fell dormant, a dried-out husk from which I could only occasionally draw a tiny trickle of inspiration. I reigned in my ‘excessiveness’ and focused instead on developing the analytical and essay-writing skills that were expected, praised and rewarded by teachers and parents.

      The longing remained: to be a writer, to tell stories, to fly from one flower of experience to another, gathering pollen and making honey. But my wings wouldn’t carry me anymore, and I couldn’t find the hive that would help me turn moments of creative vision into honey.

      And then, in 1994, in my late twenties, I attended a weekend workshop with Barbara Turner-Vesselago at the University of Western Australia. Her simple ‘Freefall Writing’ precepts allowed me to step back into the creative flow that had been blocked for so long, and her feedback gave me faith that my journey

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