FREE FREE #1 Overcoming Writers Block FREE #2 Bill Answers Any 25 Word Question FREE #3 Handbook When You Enroll FREE #1 Overcoming Writer’s Block Enroll Like most forms of stalling, writer’s block begins with irrational perfectionism – your conscious desire and your unconscious fears fighting each other, as if the very first sentence you write will be snatched from your computer in the night and printed for the world to laugh at in tomorrow’s N.Y. Times. One of my goals in this course is to teach students how to get that first draft out from between their ears and onto the computer screen.  No matter how ugly or stupid -- out where it can be worked on. Until that happens, nothing else does. “Books and plays are not written, they are re-written.” So here’s an exercise in getting your unconscious to work for you. It involves anxiety and time – but that is the essence of the idea.  Don’t skip ahead. Day One, Step One.  Think of someone you love or admire. What was the first thing that struck you about him/her?  Write one sentence – no more – that begins to describe the way you met, even if only what was the weather like. Done? Turn off the computer, and don’t write more until tomorrow. Day Two, Step Two.  Turn on the computer. Edit that sentence. Do not write Sentence Two. Turn the computer off. Day Three. By now your unconscious has become focused on what you are doing, and is eager to help. Sentence after sentence has begun to appear, full blown, in your mind.  Write down Sentence Two, no more, and turn the computer off. Do not write Sentence Three. Step Four. Repeat these steps with each succeeding sentence, turning the computer off each time until you the urge to write becomes a kind of pleasurable, anticipatory pain of waiting for a sneeze: Bang! What a relief! Let it all come out. And forever after:  Repeat any time you again get stuck. Free #2 Bill Answers Any 25 Word Question Enroll            “ Do publishers accept emailed or single spaced manuscripts?          “ How do I find a good agent?  Should I pay one to read my stuff?          “ Bill, I can’t decide which of these two first sentences I like better.  Which do you recommend?         “ How long does a novel have to be?          “ Etc.           Petty or profound, if questions like these are forever nagging at the back of your mind, you need never be alone with them again.  Enrollment in WTGP brings lifelong access: email me any of your questions about writing and/or publishing forever after during your writing career…if it can be stated in 25 words or less.  By return email, you will get a reply based on my long experience with New York editors, agents and publishers. -Bill Manville Free #3 WTGP Student's Handbook Enroll Subtitled, “What I Have So Far Found Out about Writing to Get Published,” this is my own textbook, written for the WTGP course – and, as the old joke goes, not available in any store. These pages illustrate the tenets I teach with “for instance” paragraphs and pages from writers like Joan Didion, Scott Fitzgerald, Anthony Powell, E.L. Doctorow, Eudora Welty and -- since it is the stuff I know best -- some of my own work.  Read it at your leisure, or to find an apt point when something you’ve written doesn’t sound right. Let me say right here, neither the book nor the course guarantees a publishing contract. What I can promise is that in these pages  --(67 right now, and growing as I learn more myself) – you will find how to maximize your chances for that to happen. The Handbook comes by immediate and automatic return email when you enroll. If you don’t like the course, there is a money back guarantee, but either way, the Handbook is yours, free.  How can you lose? -Bill Manville