Many thanks to WriteWords for giving me this book to review.

The Five-Minute Writer is a collection of 57 writing exercises, each of which comes prefaced with a couple of explanatory pages discussing topics such as Characters, Settings, Backstory and so on. Although it doesn't say so anywhere, this book looks suspiciously like a reprinted collection of magazine columns. (Geraghty has been a columnist for both Writing Magazine and Writers News.) I say this because the exercises appear to be printed in random order, rather than following any obvious scheme. This leads to occasional problems. For example, many of the early exercises instruct readers to perform something called a "creative search", yet it is not until Exercise 20 that this term is actually explained. This randomness of the topics also lends the book a rather arbitrary feel: when you reach the end there is no sense of having completed a course of study.

Despite this unhelpful format, the things Geraghty has to say about writing are generally interesting. Her advice ranges widely in the level of knowledge assumed in the audience. Some of the pieces seem aimed at real beginners, such as the brief chapter explaining why writers should avoid cliches. Others are more sophisticated, such as the one dealing with T.S.Eliot's theory of "objective correlatives", which was new to me and very well explained. One thing I liked about the book was the wealth of contemporary references used: there's as many mentions of Desperate Housewives or The Da Vinci Code as there are of Grahame Greene or Marcel Proust. Hell, Charlie Kaufman even gets a mention which shows that Geraghty has great taste in screenwriters if nothing else. (Having said this, there are also a few occasional jarring errors that jump off the page: Dick Turpin is described as "stealing from the rich to give to the poor", while the Raffles stories are attributed to Edgar Wallace.)

Unfortunately, writing is not the only thing Geraghty wants to tell us about. she also has a keen interest in psychology, which she insists on beating us over the head with at every opportunity. Of course, an interest in the psychology of human behaviour is absolutely key to writing fiction. But Geraghty's constant mentions of psychological studies that she has read come across as nothing more than showing off. At one point she talks about the power of using opposites when creating characters, and gives the excellent example of Bogart and Hepburn's characters in The African Queen. But then we are told "According to Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the power of opposites is no accident". That's it, though. She doesn't actually tell us anything about what these eminences have to say on the subject: they are just big names wheeled out to support her argument. This happens continually and becomes quite annoying.

There is also a good deal of advice along the line of: "Too busy to make progress on your novel ? Write out an 'affirmation' to yourself, telling yourself that you will make more progress from now on!" WW-ers must make their own minds up as to whether they think that is the kind of suggestion worth shelling out nearly ten quid for.

In summary, If I was writing "full time" with no other distractions, I'd probably enjoy working through this book. I have no doubt my writing would benefit considerably from working through the exercises, which would also generate plenty of ideas for future projects. Most of the exercises are clearly aimed at prose writers, but writers for stage or screen could also benefit from many of them. Unfortunately, while the aim of the book is that these exercises should take only five minutes, most of them are quite absorbing and could easily soak up an hour or more if you wanted to get the most out of them. Since my time for writing is limited, I think my efforts would be better spent getting on with the job at hand. Therefore I can't really recommend this as a purchase to busy writers - especially as the lack of any index makes it a poor reference work once it has been read.

Thank you Griff.

As a collector of how to write books (this is a really unfortunate trait which I wholly discourage) I was really interested in whether this one was going to be useful. Your review has certainly helped make my mind up.

I think I have enough for going on with and I don't expect to add it to my expanding library in the near future.

However, it sounds like a book to be read further down the line for me and could prove useful when I'm more confident.

Hello Griff, As you can probably guess, I'm Margret, the author of the Five-Minute Writer and I'd like to thank you for taking the trouble to read my book and post a review. You've raised a number of interesting points and I hope you don't mind if I respond to them? In doing so, I hope that you and/or other members of the forum may gain some useful pointers on what can happen to a book once it leaves the hands of its author and passes to the publisher.

1. You mention that the book looks as if it might be a reprinted collection of my magazine columns. In fact, every exercise was written specifically for the book. The random order was deliberate. My first book (The Novelist's Guide) had a very clear structure and that suited the content. I wanted this book to be one that readers could dip into at will. I did consider grouping the exercises according to topic but the publisher thought it fine as it was.

However, as you have pointed out, the randomness did lead to problems, of which the late inclusion of an explanation for creative search is an example. My original manuscript contained no explanation at all (slap on the wrist, Margret). Odd as it may seem, neither my agent nor the various editors who read the book picked up on this. It was only when the galley proofs were sent through for my approval that I noticed the omission. As you may know, you can't change the pagination at galley stage so the explanation had to be inserted where it would best fit.

2. Re the psychological references, the book is - and always was - intended to be a psychological approach to writing, although the publisher played down this aspect in the marketing, which has obviously led to some confusion. I wonder if you have read my introduction? This makes clear the premise of the book. I included references for two reasons. First, I like to acknowledge my source material. Second, I wanted to give readers who were interested in the connections between psychology and storytelling the chance to explore those connections for themselves. Unfortunately, the publishers would not agree to my using footnotes - which readers would have been free to ignore. I therefore had a difficult choice. Delete the references or import them into the text. I chose the latter, but I agree it looks clumsy. I also sympathise with your feelings of frustration at being beaten over the head with things you didn't want to know.

I'm not sure I understand your allusion to showing off, though. Suppose I had written a book about psychology which referenced literature/film as a means of illuminating the human mind? Would you make the same comment? I would guess not. Psychology has a lot to contribute to our understanding of storytelling. Indeed, I would argue that fiction - be it film or literature - is a kind of folk psychology in its own right.

3. Saussure and Levi-Strauss. Big names indeed, and I would have liked to have included more of their theories. Again, if the reader is interested, he or she can explore the path. However, just as you felt beaten over the head with psychology, others may have felt overwhelmed by linguistics. To be fair, I did include a little more than you have given me credit for.

4. Finally, the jarring 'errors'. Griff, whatever the truth about the real Dick Turpin (and I accept that he was a criminal who treated rich and poor alike) he has become a mythical figure in the public imagination. It was this romantic image to which I referred. I understand how this might annoy a purist, though. Re Raffles, The Collected Raffles , available from ecampus.com, does indeed list Edgar Wallace as the main author. I should, of course, have pointed out that Raffles, the character. was created by E W Hornung. Many thanks for picking me up on this. If the book is reprinted, I'll see that this is corrected.

Once again, Griff, many thanks for reading the book. You seem to have enjoyed it, despite its flaws. Good luck with your own writing. What is your field? (I should mention that I'm not a member of WriteWords. One of the administrators kindly allowed me in to reply to your review. I may get chucked out at any time!

All the best
Margret PS. Readers looking for my work may get better results if they put in the correct spelling of my name which is MARGRET

I would just like to say, Griff, that I have a copy of Margret Gereghty's The Novelist's Guide, which is the only writers manual I have needed - although I do admit to peeking inside a few others.
I look forward to reading The Five-Minute Writer too.

- NaomiM

<Added>

Oops, apologies, Geraghty - assume profuse blushing here.

Hi Margret

Firstly, apologies for mis-spelling your name. I realised as soon as I posted the review that I had done so and was very cross with myself. My own name is long and complicatedly Welsh and so I know what it is to suffer from mis-spelling.

When I saw that you had responded to my review I broke into a cold sweat and started worrying whether I had written anything particularly horrid. Going back over it, I feel reassured that I got the message across that I liked a lot of things about your book, but disliked some aspects. So I don't feel too bad.

I'll take your points in turn. (Fishes out copy of book - it's still on my bookshelf so that must say sonething.)

1. The book did, and does, look like a reprinted collection of magazine columns. The fact that the text refers to instances where students have previously tried out the exercises also made me think this was a collection of exercises you had gathered over time. But anyway, that wasn't meant as a criticism, I like anthologies. Perhaps future editions of the book could highlight "all-new exercises" or suchlike in order to prevent future readers making the same mistake as me.

2. I think my biggest contention with the book was the issue of the psychological and linguistics references. I had no objection to your inclusion of these, they are fascinating topics. In fact when I read your introduction I thought "oh that sounds interesting". However I felt that although these topics were referred to frequently: "psychologists say", "the latest research suggests" etc., there was so little actual information on these topics conveyed that it might have been better not to have included them at all. My point about "According to Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the power of opposites is no accident" is an example of this. Telling the reader that "the power of opposites is no accident", but not explaining any further, is rather unhelpful. Why is it no accident, I wanted to know ? Which is why I felt that if you weren't going to expand on the work, just mentioning Levi-Strauss and de Saussure in passing feels uncomfortably like "name-dropping", hence my allusion to "showing off". But your explanation about footnotes clears things up - a footnote saying "for more information about this, read Levi-Strauss" would have been (to me) more palatable. It's a shame you weren't allowed to use them.

3. We'll have to disagree about Dick Turpin. I'm not sure that popular myth does place him as a kindly Robin Hood style redistributor of wealth. But with Raffles, who you will have detected I am a fan of, ecampus.com is plainly in error. Amazon correctly lists The Collected Raffles as due to Hornung. I'm not aware that Edgar Wallace ever wrote any Raffles stories. I only mentioned this because as a reader, spotting this kind of error raises suspicions that the writer is talking about a book they aren't actually familiar with. (But hey, we all make these kinds of errors, and one would hope this is the kind of thing that proof-readers pick up...?)

Anyway, as I said, your book is still on my bookshelf, and when I next get around to writing some fiction, I'm sure I could do a lot worse than work through your exercises to get me going.

Cheers,

-- Griff

Hi Griff

Good to hear from you (in person this time). I've taken on board all your comments and they are really helpful to me. You wrote a constructive review. I'd much rather someone was honest about what they thought.

Unfortunately, I can't really blame the copy editors for the Raffles error - much as I'd like to. That was down to me, and I'm grateful to you for pointing it out.

All the best
Margret

Thanks for the compliment, Naomi. Don't worry about mis-spelling Geraghty. I sometimes even do that myself. It's the Margret I care about.