How To Talk About Writing: A Fundamental Shift in Perspective (Paperback or Softback)

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.

The precepts of Freefall Writing provide a foundational practice for any writer, but I’m convinced that the way Barbara talks about writing is an even greater source of learning. — Geoff Mead, PhD, Visiting Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, UK

...at each stage of my Freefall learning I have unfailingly received what I needed—I have been shown which sentences engaged the reader, and why some did not; I have had my intentions understood and enjoyed, and I have been given new ways of taking the writing further that were within my grasp.  — Judith Hemming, Constellations Therapist, UK 

Barbara revealed that writing really involves both the act of putting forth the words, and the act receiving of them. How I receive other people’s writing, how I ruminate and respond, requires the same faculties and skills that I require as a writer. — Kaye Gersch, PhD, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Australia

For the last two years, Barbara’s fortnightly feedback on my writing has dropped like a jewel into my inbox...there is an impatience to each of those jewels in my inbox, an urgent and stirring reminder to tap into, trust, and write from the raw energy of nascent insight—one lying beyond surface memory or fantasy that I never thought I would find. — Rebecca Ellis, UK 

Barbara Turner-Vesselago showed me a sort of structureless structure that allowed an expansion of what I’d been doing in my fishing essays. Suspend judgment, trust the process and, most importantly, keep writing. — Tom Ohaus, US 

My writing group, following Barbara Turner-Vesselago’s discoveries, outlined in How to Talk About Writing, ‘divine’ together—both in our writing and in the talk that follows...Feedback from the group merges with the writing. We colour in the moments when each person’s words filled our beings, enjoy story specific dialogue and see the wisdom of not tinkering. Smiles spontaneously erupt, and ‘aha’ gasps fill the room as insights ignite and are absorbed.  — Georgina Mavor, Psychologist, Australia