8 Lessons To Learn from Screwing Up Your Manuscript

How many times have you screwed up your writing? Once? Twice? A hundred times? A thousand times? Counting all the times you’re screwing up this very instant and the times you intend to screw up in the future. . .infinity? EVERYONE SCREWS UP. This should be printed in big, bold… Read more“8 Lessons To Learn from Screwing Up Your Manuscript”

5 Ways to Make Your Novel Helplessly Addictive

Books break the shackles of time.—Carl Sagan Last week I did a post on 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Unforgettable. That was basically all about the CLIMAX, which many of you astutely figured out. But before your reader gets to the part that’s unforgettable, you have to make them… Read more“5 Ways to Make Your Novel Helplessly Addictive”

4 Big Reasons to be Grateful for Independent Editors

You’re living and writing right now, today, in the midst of huge change in the publishing industry. It’s so huge that by the time you’re ten years older you’ll have navigated the tectonic shift from Pangea to a modern continent. One of the major developments of that change is the… Read more“4 Big Reasons to be Grateful for Independent Editors”

5 Ways to Make Your Novel Unforgettable

Only the invisible bears us up; we speak together in the shocking darkness, each carrying the other somehow, unseen.—Derek Raymond Here’s the thing about storytelling, folks: it has to have a purpose. Why are you telling this story? I mean, what’s your point? If your point is that writing fiction… Read more“5 Ways to Make Your Novel Unforgettable”

How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack
the Chuck Sambuchino interview

Chuck Sambuchino is the aspiring writer’s conduit to the world of literary representation. An editor and writer for Writer’s Digest Books, he edits two annual resources: Guide to Literary Agents and Children’s Writers & Illustrators Market, and his first book was the third edition of Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript…. Read more“<em>How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack</em><br>the Chuck Sambuchino interview”

The Drug of Good Writing: the Weronika Janczuk interview

Weronika Janczuk, Independent Editor and writer of YA, literary and historical fiction, just signed on as a literary agent with D4EO Literary Agency. Weronika’s been a reader and commenter here for some time, so when she announced her recent promotion, I realized this is a perfect opportunity to bring the… Read more“<em>The Drug of Good Writing:</em> the Weronika Janczuk interview”

10 Things To Do To Become a Better Writer in 10 Days

How to Find the Best Independent Editor for You Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. —Kris Kristopherson, “Me and Bobby McGee” Spend one day being a troll Be as obnoxious as humanly possible online. Go around arguing with people on their own sites, expressing opinions they won’t… Read more“10 Things To Do To Become a Better Writer in 10 Days”

Getting back in the saddle, with a peek at copyright law

The pen is mightier than the sword. —Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy Hey, guys, it’s been two mighty quick weeks of vacation, and I’m back from the Pacific Northwest. It was summer there. It might even have been summer here, too, but it was not when we left, and… Read more“Getting back in the saddle, with a peek at copyright law”