Finishing School: The Happy Ending to That Writing Project You Can’t Seem to Get Done

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. [em](Jan.) [/em]