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 …
How to tell a good story
I’m taking a blogging break this week, but here’s a little something: Ira Glass of the radio show This American Life discusses the elements of storytelling in this series of videos from Public Radio International. Glass is speaking of nonfiction, particularly short nonfiction for broadcast. But the principles apply in …