When you’re just starting out, it doesn’t matter what your e-mail address looks like. But when you reach the point of submitting to publishers or even self-publishing, you need a professional e-mail address. Make that especially if you’re self-publishing. The self-published author is a businessperson, and needs a businesslike address. …
Your first draft can be awful, as long as it’s finished
The difference between a good novel and a great novel is editing. Before you submit your manuscript for traditional publication, you must edit thoroughly. That goes double if you plan to self-publish. At the Florida Writers Association’s Mid-Winter Conference West and Reading Festival in Bradenton last week, one of the …
Tomatoes and time management
One of the keys to managing your time and your projects is breaking large projects down into do-able tasks. Writing a book is a massive job, and if your to-do list says “write book,” that item will be there for months, mocking your inability to cross it off. But “write …
Keeping track of plurals and possessives
Errors involving the presence or absence of an apostrophe or the letter s are among the most common spelling mistakes, which is why I mention the problem over on my Services page: There is some overlap among line editing, copyediting, and proofreading. For example, all include taking care of pesky …
Marcher Lord Press sold
The Christian Speculative Fiction community is a-flutter today over news that Jeff Gerke, founder of Marcher Lord Press, sold the five-year-old company to Steve Laube. Laube is a literary agent with an appreciation for Christian Speculative Fiction, having represented Bryan Davis, Sharon Hinck, and Tosca Lee. Gerke intends to focus …
Happy New Year
One may walk over the highest mountain one step at a time. — John Wanamaker Whatever mountain lies before you, whether it’s on the horizon or staring you in the face, I pray that this year you will reach the summit. When you get there…take time to enjoy the view.
Happy Christmas
Here’s a little Christmas present from Lindsey Stirling, one of my favorite musicians. If you sign up for her mailing list you can get an mp3 download of this song.
Can a person be a “that?”
Ever had critique partners question a sentence like this? The waiter that spilled coffee on my new dress offered to pay the dry-cleaning bill. Some will say you shouldn’t use “that” for a person. But Garner’s Modern American Usage and other expert sources say it’s acceptable. Are your critique partners …
Collected resources for writers
I added a couple of new pages: you’ll find them under the “Resources” menu. The Freebies page is a collection of my downloads, including cheat sheets and the manuscript formatting guide. The Recommended Reading page will look familiar to anyone who’s taken one of my seminars. It’s a list of …
Don’t hide the POV character’s identity
One of the most common point of view errors we see in amateur novels is what I call Hidden Identity Syndrome. This seems to be an attempt on the part of fiction writers to replicate something we see in movies: A nondescript figure walks into a darkened room, rifles the …