Updated for 2020: Best books for writers
Updated for 2020: Best books for writers of fiction It’s been a stressful year to try to write a novel. It feels easier for many authors to step back from …
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Best places to find a professional editor
In an age when anyone can hang out a shingle on the internet as a fiction editor, sniffing out the best places to find an editor falls to authors. “I’ve …
A tiny collection of better ways to write more
What have you done to support your creative self lately? Oh, stop flopping about trying to think of something—it’s just an article, not a test—and get busy sampling all these …
Avoid this editing misconception that could sabotage your writing
Cleaning up messes is standard operating procedure for editors. Whether we’re handed story messes such as plot holes, writing messes such as head-hopping, or mechanical messes such as three different …
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Peeling the onion: The simplified revision plan
How many passes are enough to prepare a manuscript for professional editing? If you take away anything from this article, let it be this: No editor wants to work on …
The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Publishing and Editing Goals
At what point is your novel a success? Is it a sales total or sell-through percentage? Is it a number of starred reviews? A four-figure advance? A five-figure advance? How …
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Writing Software: Why you need Microsoft Word
When your book is ready for editing, it’s time to pack it neatly into an industry-standard file format. Whether you write in dedicated writing software like Scrivener or key your …
Why you need a writing partner or group and how to find one
How can it be that the very thing you crave most as a novelist—that other people read your book—feels impossible to allow once you’ve finished the darn thing? There’s always …
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Decide Now, Decide Later: Decisions to make before an edit
The internet is afloat in advice about the different types of editing your book could use: developmental editing to optimize the story, line editing to polish the writing, copy editing …
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New writing resources page
Ever wondered what writing resources I recommend to my own clients? You’ve been asking me for a list of favorite writing advice and resources, so I finally broke down and …
Should you use volunteers to proofread your book?
What if you skipped paying for a professional editor and crowdsourced your editing instead? Or what about your neighbor who’s a retired English teacher? She says she’d only charge $200 …
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What every writer should know before writing a first novel
Your first time attempting anything you value is fraught with risk. Most authors I know tackle their first novels with little more than hopes and dreams under the hood. Under …
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Best Books on Writing Fiction: Recommended books for novelists
The craft books I most enjoy reading are tough tomes with new techniques of breaking down and analyzing recalcitrant manuscripts. But the best books on writing fiction, the ones I …
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What does revision really involve?
Writing is such a minuscule part of the writing a novel. People who’ve never written anything longer than a school paper have a hard time imagining that pouring all those …
Is this book commercially viable?
Most first-time authors begin writing in response to some vague creative itch. They’ve no idea how many books like theirs already exist; most assume that none do. These authors are …
File names that show your manuscript revision status
When your whole story lies ahead of you, it’s easy to naively assume you’ll name your manuscript file TheGirlWiththeFuzzyManuscript_Orig, then go to FuzzyGirl_Revised, and maybe finish with TGWTFM_BetaFeedback. What you …
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The writer’s solution to beating perfectionism and procrastination
Every writer wants to become that noteworthy debut author who’s the darling of the bestseller charts and book blogs. With that kind of pressure, it’s no wonder so many authors …
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Are you overusing character names in your novel?
Some of the most common edits I make at the sentence and paragraph levels have to do with overusing character names in a story. These edits arise from a single …
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Kick-start your own career development program for new novelists
What if everything in the world went right for your book, and now you may actually have a writing career? The thing that many emerging authors neglect to plan for …
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Develop your writing muscle through imitation
Modeling and imitation are time-tested techniques used by athletes, artists, and skill-builders of all stripes. One of the best ways to stretch your writing skills is to draw inspiration from …
Affordable ways to study the craft of writing
Are you still struggling with where to put the comma in a dialogue tag (or was that a period)? Forget mixing up peek/peak/pique; are you still struggling with it’s/its or …
12 reasons to learn how to write a brilliant synopsis
You can quit holding your nose now—this whole synopsis thing is going to take longer than a single breath of air. Writing your synopsis is a must-have writing skill for …
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Is your book ready for editing?
Nothing makes an editor sadder than slogging through a manuscript that isn’t ready for editing yet. Let’s not embark upon a journey your manuscript isn’t ready to take. Really. As …
Why your first book should not be part of a series
Writing a series is standard operating procedure for self-published authors seeking to grow their catalogs. The formula is simple: stretch a story concept across two, three, four books or more, …
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10 ways a book editor can help besides editing
An editor can give you a hand out of all sorts of tight spots in your book’s development, not just writing and editing. A seasoned outside eye can help you …