Editing a first draft into something polished and publishable is the real work of writing, and often what separates career authors from hobbyists.
Tiffany Yates Martin
Your job as a fiction writer is to focus attention not on the words, which are inert, nor on the thoughts these words produce, but through these to felt experience, where the vitality of understanding lies.
Janet Burroway
I’m not sure which is tougher: being an editor who knows good writing or being a writer who knows good editing. My blog is a way of attempting to maintain balance in the creative landscape. After all, they are two sides of the same coin. Of course, you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter The Editor–Author Perspective below for free tips in your inbox every first Tuesday.
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Fan fiction has so much more to offer authors than the opportunity to play around with their favorite TV, book, or movie characters. Writing fan fiction offers the chance to hone your craft. This week’s blog article argues why that’s the case.
There’s something special about writing prompts. Even for someone who primarily sticks with the editing side of the book publishing process, I find them vital to stirring up creativity. I provide a few ways to make them work best for authors, no matter their preferred genre.
There are countless writing craft books on the shelves these days, spanning fiction and nonfiction, and every genre within those categories. I highlight two that I’ve discovered, two that should serve as the foundation of every fiction writer’s craft library.
The final stage of the editing process is proofreading. In this week’s article, I go just beneath the surface of this process, and why it’s so vital for authors to go through this prior to moving forward in their book publishing journey. While proofreaders focus on the smallest details, they…
The publishing process would not be complete without copyediting, covering the mechanical side of how a manuscript reads and looks. This week, I discuss what that entails and how it helps an author reflect on their manuscript one word at a time.
Word by word and sentence by sentence. In this week’s blog on the editing process, I focus on what exactly it is line editors do and how they work to improve your story “one word at a time!”
Even best-selling authors have to go through the editing process, and it all starts with developmental editing. Follow me as I break down this initial step in the editing journey and introduces the key questions to be answered at this stage in the book publishing journey.
