Don Fry spoke to our National Society of Newspaper Columnists last June. You may remember his striking common sense and optimism about writing. He has just published a book entitled “Writing Your Way, Creating Your own Writing Process that Works for You” (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest, 2012). The book is available from local bookstores and from Amazon in print and Kindle versions.
Don says that 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 readers to experience you. Many of the examples in the book come from opinion writing. Don Fry has helped over 10,000 writers worldwide to write better and faster, with less agony.
Don first taught Beowulf and Chaucer at the University of Virginia and at Stony Brook University. Later, he headed the writing faculty at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. As an independent writing coach, Don improves the writing and editing at newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, and non-profit organizations.
He has coached over a thousand authors, helping them create writing processes that work for them. Don has published hundreds of articles and 17 books. His writing blog appears at www.donfry.wordpress.com, and he posts a daily writing tip on Twitter at @donaldkfry.