Finishing School

October 3, 2016
Tennis, a former Salon columnist, and journalist Morton (coauthor of Not My Boy! A Father, a Son, and One Family’s Journey with Autism) seek to free writers from a near-universal burden—unfinished projects—by meticulously outlining Tennis’s Finishing School writing program. Drawing on their own experiences and those of other writers, they explain how the program evolved out of Tennis’s own difficulties completing a novel. It offers a support system designed to overcome six common emotional pitfalls: doubt, shame, yearning, fear, judgment, and arrogance. Members of Finishing School writing groups, which meet weekly, commit to writing for a certain number of hours and completing specific tasks. They also choose buddies to contact when they hit writing snags. It is this accountability, according to Tennis, that writers find particularly helpful. Unlike in more traditional writers’ groups, Finishing School members do not critique one another’s work; they listen to and learn from one another as equals, establishing “clear goals supported by well-defined tasks.” This book insightfully pinpoints the importance of time budgeting and management, and of setting reasonable expectations for completion. It’s gimmicky at times, but its advice and methodology will be useful for countless writers and would-be writers, and for people wanting to complete unfinished projects of any kind.

December 1, 2016
Countless writers have dream projects they just can't seem to get finished or even off the ground, a problem that Tennis and Morton tackle with a combination of sensitivity and practicality. Their book is designed to help scribes identify and address what's blocking them and create a sensible plan for moving ahead on their blocked project. The authors, an advice columnist and a ghostwriter who both have struggled with stalled projects of their own, begin by addressing the emotional pitfalls that keep writers from getting the work done: doubt, shame, yearning, fear, judgment, and arrogance. After breaking the elements down to show how each can cripple a writer as well as chronicling their own battles with them, they delve into how Finishing School works. Started by Tennis, Finishing School brings people together to set reasonable time commitments for their projects each week and then pairs them so that each person is accountable to another. Straightforward and realistic, Finishing School offers a viable option for anyone longing to complete a writing project.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)