Don’t let rare and complicated scenarios or exceptions confuse you. If you only learn these 7 very simple rules, you’ll be right 97% of the time. That’s good enough for me to see your writing as smart and clean.
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If you just need a tool to organize a long document, you can change your life in a couple of minutes. Totally worth the investment, even if you never take advantage of all the bells and whistles.
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Format your book the right way for each occasion— pitching agents with a manuscript, querying nonfiction with a book proposal, or for self-publishing. You want your book to stand out for its stellar writing, not for its unorthodox formatting. Here’s how the pros do it.
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Word count guidelines matter, and believe it or not, there are good reasons. In this post, I go over word count standards by genre, why they are what they are, why word count matters even for self-published authors, and what to do if your book is too long or too short.
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Book editing rates are calculated in so many different ways it’s hard to know where to start. Here’s what you should expect to pay for an average-length book of 80,000 words.
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Developmental editors, line editors, copyeditors, acquiring editors…Who are are these people? How and when should you hire and work with them? In this post, I’ll go over the different editorial roles, and then I’ll offer my thoughts on who might be best to hire and when.
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Are you making any of these grammar mistakes?
If so, you’re far from alone. No need to be ashamed about the past, but now’s the time to clean up your act. Master these 8 English language potholes, and your writing will be more professional, saving you embarrassment and/or the cost of a heavy copyediting job.
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A good beta reader can save you time and money before you hire an editor....a bad one, not so much. Here are my tips on where to find beta readers, what to avoid, what to ask, and how to make the most out of working with them.
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These are the books on writing that have helped me and my clients get published.
I’m a sucker for a good writing how-to. I’ve picked up dozens over the years, and no matter how many books I’ve purged over my 21 moves between cities, states and countries, I can’t get rid of a single one on writing.
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I want to help you edit your book the easy (well, easier or somewhat less hard) way. If anyone tells you writing, editing, or publishing a book is easy, they’re trying to sell you something.
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You’re trying to juggle a dozen things at once – an unforgettable first line, a fresh voice, an original theme, complex characters, mood and tone and conflict and a sense of mystery, and so on and so forth. In so doing, there’s a good chance you’ve inadvertently lost the most important element of all – clarity.
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Rejection is a cost of doing business. This is true not only for writers and other creatives but for anyone courageous enough to live wholeheartedly.
You can minimize it by
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I spend a lot of time encouraging writers to reach into their hearts and get out of their heads (those inner critics are serious assholes). Only, there does come a time to unleash your intellect. That time is called revision.
These are my own tried and true techniques for revising without getting overwhelmed.
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