Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer's Block

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Summary: Useful Tips on Getting Unstuck
Review: As an editor and writer myself, I found this book helpful. It offered a nice blend of personal anecdotes with practical steps to unblock your creativity.

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Summary: Learn how to practice deep compassion for your writer self
Review: I got fired up about my writer's block a few months' ago,
and read several books on the subject, including some that
are out of print. This book is by far the best that I've
read. Jane Anne Staw teaches you how to get to know your
inner writer, how to be kind and compassionate toward that
person, and how to mobilize yourself into writing. I've
read the book three times now, each time getting more out
of it than the time before. I cannot recommend it more highly.
She uses examples from all kinds of writers--businessmen
writing memos, lawyers writing briefs, grad students writing
dissertations, you name it. Staw obviously has an active
practice of being a therapist for writers with writer's
block, and she shares the nuts-and-bolts ideas she uses
in that practice.

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Summary: it works!
Review: I wasn't sure I believed in writer's block, much less suffered from it. After reading Unstuck, I realized how I had been avoiding the scary act of putting my posterior in the chair and writing. Staw's straightforward suggestions are seemingly simple: to be nice to ourselves, to start with only fifteen minute sessions, rewarding ourselves for the work we do, rather than beating ourselves up when we fail. They work: I finished a first draft of an important chapter of my memoir. I highly recommend this book.

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Summary: Speaks to all Those Who Want to Blossom Creatively
Review: Reading Unstuck was like having a trusted friend take my hand to lead me through shoals and around quicksand to a safe and quiet place to recover my writer's voice. Jane Anne Staw's supportive words enabled me to begin to tune out my inner-skeptic, to silence that brutal self-critic hovering over my keyboard, and, as she urges, to have compassion for myself. The book has useful exercises at the end of each chapter; and examples, drawn from the experiences of Dr. Staw's writing-blocked clients, are motivating and reassuring.
Yet Unstuck is far more than a self-help workbook. Woven through the pages is the author's account of her own battle with writer's block. I loved reading about her transformation, from a sleep-deprived college student struggling to write even one sentence of paper due the next morning -- did she write that just for me? -- to a "real" writer. A writer who is confident of her process and dedicated to her practice. A writer who now can declare that, once in a while, writing makes her ecstatic. It is her journey to fluency, a pilgrimage bracketed by interactions with her astrophysicist father and punctuated with deepening insights, that I found the most memorable and instructive part of Unstuck.

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Summary: You'll find yourself in Unstuck!
Review: This generous and gentle book is filled with suggestions for how to keep your writing flowing. Drawing from her years of experience working with every kind of writer, Jane Anne Staw brings us useful and practical ways to keep ourselves writing happily. Many of us have devised subtle ways of sabotaging our writing life. Jane has carefully looked at them all, and provides loving and realistic help. Fifteen minutes a day, she urges us, five minutes, just so we keep at it, and don't give up on ourselves.
At its core, Unstuck is a book about loving ourselves, being patient with our foibles, and finding a way to express our hearts and souls. Thank you Jane Anne Staw!

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Summary: You'll find yourself in Unstuck!
Review: This is a gentle, thoughtful and PRODUCTIVE book. It invites you to accept, face and work through the many, many things that can come between a writer and the blank page. I can personally testify that this book changed my life, and as a person who mentors a great many graduate students, I plan on giving each and every one of them a copy.

On top of everything else, the book is a model of what we are all trying to achieve: a clear, wonderfully-written entry into another person's being and thoughts. As the old saw goes, Jane-Anne Staw not only tells us how to be better writers, she shows us. Her writing reveals, on more levels than one, the payoff for gently confronting our resistance to writing. Her goal is to help you write with joy, and at least for me, it worked. (OK, it works most days and most of the time, but part of the gift of this book is learning to let go of perfectionism.)

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Summary: Just wonderful
Review: This is the best book I've read on writer's block, or how to be nicer to yourself when your writing isn't going well. It deals from the inside out, not concentrating as much on techniques (there are lots of books that focus on workmanship around), but instead helps you look on what's going on inside you and what led you to being blocked.

I've been reading this book slowly for several months, parcelling out the chapters and stretching the experience. It's helped me a lot with my writing. I simply love this book!

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Summary: Makes you think
Review: Unlike most books for writers, this one assumes that you are already a writer of some kind, and treats you intelligently and sympathetically, exploring the various fears that are common among writers and are at the root of writer's block, and ways to work through them. The book assumes that all writers have their own backgrounds, their own way of working, and their own individual quirks, so it does not prescribe a set program that everybody should follow. Instead, it talks about how to use your own personality and techniques to get you past the block and put your butt back in the chair.

Some of the examples seem pretty extreme. There are successful writers out there, apparently, who develop such a strong block that they have panic attacks when they sit down to write, or even just look at their computers. I figure if Dr. Staw's approach can help them, it can help me. I don't really fear writing (or do I? the book made me think about that), I just have trouble getting to it. Several times I read what she writes and thought, that's not me, then realized hours or even days later that the writers she describes aren't as different from me as I wanted to think they were. It gave me a lot of insight into the way I approach my writing, how I think about it, how I think of myself as a writer (a not-quite-real writer--there's a whole chapter about that).

The funny thing is, I realized early in the book that I was actually using the book as an avoidance technique to help justify not writing. After all, if I was reading about writer's block, then obviously I was doing something about it, so that's almost as good as writing. Of course, the best thing I could have done was put my butt in my chair and my fingers on the keyboard, even if only for a few minutes, rather than keeping my nose in a book. But I'm glad I read it anyway.

If you want to understand your writing mind, your fears about writing, how to get past that inner critic, and so on, the book is worth the time it takes to read it, and the time it takes to digest what you've read.