The announcement by Jerry B. Jenkins that his Christian Writers Guild is getting into the author services business created a bit of a ruckus in the publishing business. Victoria Strauss put together a great analysis of CWG Publishing over at the Writer Beware blog. Some people are calling CWGP a …
Manuscript formatting: Advanced topics
Last time I shared the basics a writer needs to know to prepare a book manuscript for submission to an agent or editor. Here are some of the finer points.
What your typing teacher didn’t tell you about manuscript formatting
A writer once complained to me that she had spent a lot of time going through her manuscript replacing all the five-space paragraph indents with tabs. She didn’t realize the five-space indent was wrong. She said, “I didn’t get that memo!” I almost didn’t have the heart to tell her …
When it’s okay to spell okay ‘OK’
Writers and editors may be the only people who get into arguments about spelling. In fact, I think it could easily be said that if you’re inclined to argue about how things ought to be spelled, you’re an editor, at heart if not by title. I’ve been inclined to spell …
Nonrule: Don’t Use ‘Start’ or ‘Begin’
Fiction writers often tell this lie to one another: “Don’t use words like started or began.” I’ve even heard it referred to as “the start rule.” They don’t realize they’re lying, of course. But this not a rule. It’s advice, and poorly expressed. The more accurate way to express it …
Behold the power of the outline
At a chamber fellowship meeting, I was once asked to share my top editing tip. Didn’t have to think long about it: outline. I resisted outlining for many years, because it reeked of term papers and therefore seemed uncreative. Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Pro software convinced me otherwise. Designed for novel-writing, …
When passive voice is permissible
Writers and editors often pass on things they’ve learned—usually at the knee of some mentor they highly respect—in the form of seemingly inviolable rules: As it was said to me, I say to you, Thou shalt not use the passive voice. I am not saying “you have to know the …
Publishing Q&A: Do you need a professional editor?
This question came up several times during the Florida Writers Association conference. Sometimes it was “Do you need a professional editor to work on your manuscript before you self-publish?” and other times it was “Do you need a professional editor to work on your manuscript before you submit for traditional …
English is hard. I’m here to help.
English is a beautiful but complex language. Because it borrows words from pretty much every other language on the planet, it has a massive vocabulary. Syntax can be intricate. Word formation is often illogical; for example, flammable and inflammable both mean “easy to burn.” Rules for punctuation are almost inscrutable. …
New year, new beginnings
I’ve never been one for new year’s resolutions. If a change is going to be made, one might as well make it now as wait for some arbitrary date on the calendar. But it just happens that this change — redesigning my website — has been in the planning stages …