Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #357965 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 194 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent Practical Advice for All Writers and Authors
“Weinberg on Writing – The Fieldstone Method” is a marvelous handbook that will be immensely beneficial to anyone desiring to be a successful writer.
A popular belief about gifted artists is how easily their art comes to them. In the preface of the “First Folio” of Shakespeare’s plays, the publishers Heminge and Cordell write: “His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”
For lesser mortals, however, assistance in improving our artistic craft is a true godsend. Gerald Weinberg, an accomplished author, takes time in “Weinberg on Writing” to explore with us in detail the method underlying his own processes. In so doing, he provides a welcomed service, presenting us with a cogent set of techniques, exercises, examples and advice to aid us in our writing.
“The Fieldstone Method” rests on a powerfully apt analogy, the creation of sound stone-wall structures. It takes energy and time to build a stone wall, and it takes energy and time to write. “The Fieldstone Method” shows us how the process of harnessing ideas and words into a written work is like building a stone wall: gathering, arranging, rearranging, and discarding stones as the wall evolves organically over time. Its most remarkable feature is how it helps writers keep personal energy high, efforts focused and the daunting work of composition forward-moving.
When I read about any methodology, I ask myself how well it meets certain qualities. Is the method probable? Is it possible? Practical? Plastic? Psychologically sound? For “The Fieldstone Method,” the answer in each case is emphatically “Yes.”
Weinberg’s “Fieldstone Method” is probable in two senses: the apparent reasonableness of what it proposes and the increased likelihood of success for those adopting it. His approach is possible in that the steps it outlines are truly achievable by ordinary people. The eminent practicality of Weinberg’s method is evidenced by the many imaginative exercises he lays out for writers, exercises that can be undertaken repeatedly with continuing benefit. Of course, all this would matter little were not his method sufficiently plastic so as to be both adaptable to the particular needs of individuals in all their varieties of personality and moods and applicable to the many types of writing people attempt; and that quality brings us to his method’s psychological soundness. Weinberg has spent much of his career observing, studying, understanding and appreciating people and how they work, especially those undertaking intellectual activities. His methods are generously humane and grounded in profound wisdom and genuine insight into the complete human condition.
So, for anyone facing the challenges of transforming ideas into words that others will read, “Weinberg on Writing – The Fieldstone Method” will be an invaluable addition to your personal library. It will provide wonderful guidance and inspiration from now through the rest of your career. It certainly will do so for me.