Writer’s Neck
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September 29, 2015

Whether you are reading, researching, taking notes, or writing, your neck and shoulders are likely to get stuck at an angle which will make you tight, stiff, and eventually sore. Your head weighs about ten lbs. When you tilt your head forward, it will cause your neck and muscles to have to work as hard as if your head weighed 30 lbs., according to Erik… [Read More]

Is an Online Writing Class Right for You?
by,
September 22, 2015

Joyce Maynard found ads for James Patterson Master Class in her Facebook newsfeed and signed up to discover the secrets to writing a bestselling book. She wrote an article for The Observer about what Patterson had to teach her about writing – and selling – books. That she herself was a published author of a couple memoirs and a dozen novels did not prevent her… [Read More]

How to Turn a Good Book into a Great One
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September 15, 2015

The July publication of Go Set a Watchman revealed Harper Lee changed point of view when she rewrote it as To Kill a Mockingbird. The new book is an unedited version and shows Harper Lee sloppily slip-sliding between first-person and third. The difference between a story narrated by Jean Louise Finch, a 26-year-old daughter, about her disillusionment in Atticus and small town bigotry, and the… [Read More]

Adventures with a Small Publisher
by,
July 28, 2015

Often when people plan to write a book, they dream their book will get published by one of the big publishers – Hatchette, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, or HarperCollins. My story is different and I’ve always been grateful to have gotten in on the ground floor with a small publisher. When my son was about 6 months old, I began working very part-time… [Read More]

Dealing With Rejection
by,
July 21, 2015

Let’s skip the stories about famous books that were rejected thirty, forty, or fifty-seven times before getting published and becoming well-loved classics. And forget about Stephen King’s nail on the wall that became so heavy with rejections it pulled loose from the wood. Intellectually, we all know rejection is a part of the game, but emotionally… well, emotionally, it’s a different story. So how can… [Read More]

Literary Medic
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July 14, 2015

The hardest part of my job as a book development editor is delivering bad news to a writer. An agent is not interested in offering you representation. An acquisition editor decides to pass after reading your proposal and sample chapters. You failed to make necessary editorial revisions. Rejection is a hard message to deliver. And it happens to be a task I do more often… [Read More]

Whose Book is it Anyway?
by,
June 30, 2015

So you’ve just finished the latest offering by James Patterson, Robert Ludlum, or Pitticus Lore, and you’re wondering if it was traditionally authored, co-written, ghosted, or something else entirely. Good question. In the case of Patterson, who has put out 140 novels thus far – 15 in 2014 alone – he pays others to write the books for him. These writers don’t receive royalties, but… [Read More]

Recommended. Summer. Reading.
by,
June 23, 2015

Two novels. Both are set during the Second World War and yet neither is a war story.      Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, won the Pulitizer Prize for fiction this year. Read it to gain an appreciation for what editors mean when they say “character-driven plot.” This is much more than a story about WWII. Marie-Louise is a blind 14-year-old girl… [Read More]

No Shortcuts
by,
June 16, 2015

“There’s a long history, of women especially, saying ‘Well, I just got lucky.’ I didn’t just get lucky. I worked my f***ing a** off. And then I got lucky. And if I hadn’t worked my a** off, I wouldn’t have gotten lucky. You have to do the work. You always have to do the work.”  –Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things Simply… [Read More]

Reading is your Job
by,
June 9, 2015

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that,” Stephen King wrote in his memoir, On Writing. When I hear from aspiring authors they don’t have time to read, I think about Stephen King’s observation. The likelihood of publication plummets when a writer doesn’t read. It IS that simple. As a developmental editor… [Read More]