I apologize again for missing my mark last week – I’ve recently started a new job and I was travelling still. I’m home and so my blog should be back to your regularly scheduled insanity. Editing is a strange and intimidating thing for most authors – even if you’ve worked with peers and had friends...Read More

I would like to start this blog by apologizing for being late in posting this, I am out of town and my computer has been misbehaving. I’ve considered grounding it but I’m not certain how much good that would do. Next week’s entry may be late as well and for that I apologize. Now, on...Read More

Alright, this week’s blog is going to be about dialogue. It’s a problem for many authors and I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that in order to write good dialogue you have to write “incorrectly” and that just drives people up a tree. However, despite the fact that...Read More

One thing that I have found impossibly helpful is one of the easiest parts of my writing: the character profile. While it can be an incredibly complicated bit of note taking, it can also be as simple as their name, age, height, weight and so on. The series I am working on writing with my...Read More

Lately, I’ve noticed a large problem with understanding pacing. The last three manuscripts I’ve read have started obscenely slowly. I had one book that took ten chapters to have the main character leave home and get to his new house. Needless to say I nearly fell asleep. Part of the problem with pacing is that...Read More

I’ve come to see that there seems to be a lot of confusion about what will impress an editor and while I can’t speak for every editor out there, I can certainly speak for myself and I hope that it might give some insight into what you should consider when you are making contact with...Read More

Every writer approaches organizing their writing differently, however every successful writer needs to first organize it. One of the problems I’ve seen with submissions is that oftentimes the work – while interesting and potentially good – needs explanations made and needs to have the pacing and flow worked on. The best story can become a...Read More

The tempting tome of torpid turbulance! If having a large and varied vocabulary is gold in writing then an over-reliance on a thesaurus is lead: worthless unless you’re making bullets out of it. Some authors attempt to use a thesaurus to compensate for what they feel is a lack of large or impressive words. But...Read More

One of the things I’ve noticed in editing is that the biggest stumbling block many writers have is research. Particularly with pieces that are not about the modern era. The old adage of “write what you know” is actually a good idea, but in the context of writing about something you can expand “what you...Read More