If you’ve been around the profession for long, you realize that editing can make or break you and your work. Editing is not to be taken lightly, and sometimes, how you approach it matters in doing it well. We all know that you edit the big picture before you dive into the minutiae. Whether fiction, […]
Self-Editing
/ 2021-05-10<<I’ve heard of writers saying they are afraid to submit something as it never seems good enough to submit. I know we have to get over perfection paralysis to submit. But even if I proofread something two to three times and submit it, it seems that if I look again, it’s like, ‘Oh, I missed […]
Accepting Advice
/ 2021-04-02Not long ago, I was in an online chat. A woman had just been offered representation by an agent, and she was over the moon. She was concerned, however, that the agent had asked that parts of the story be rewritten in a different direction. Others in the chat rose up in a banter about […]
A Different View on Rejection
/ 2021-02-26Not long ago, I was reviewing submissions to this newsletter (which also go on my blog), and something happened I’ve never had happen before. Every single one of them fell short of an acceptance. After a marathon review session, I rejected nine submissions in one day. Nine submissions may not sound like a lot; however, […]
An Annual Rant about the Art of Critique
/ 2021-01-22Critiquing has an etiquette all its own, but way too many people have never been taught those manners or do not care to follow them. As a result, they impact their own character. They will argue that character does not play into the equation; however, critiquing, like any human interaction, comes with best practices. The […]
The Importance of a Recipe
/ 2020-09-18Recipes are directions, and in most cases, directions on how to create food. One of my relaxing pastimes is reading recipes, collecting them, and dissecting them on what makes them easy, unique, or particularly mouth-watering. I ponder how to alter them, improve them, add to make the flavor better. I imagine the type of setting […]
When You Have an Editor’s Ear
/ 2020-06-12Editors juggle a lot of balls in finding literary material for publications. They have multiple deadlines for multiple editions and all the administrative nuts and bolts that come with putting a publication together. When finally obtaining the ear of an editor, keep your moment(s) brief, because others just like you are vying for that editor’s […]
The Journey of Editing Autobiography and Memoir
/ 2020-05-15Are you an editor of fiction who would like to venture into editing autobiography and memoir? When I took my first autobiographical editing job in June last year, I soon recognized a whole different ball game – and a fresh learning curve. Autobiography… Or Memoir? An autobiography recounts the whole story from beginning to end […]
The Fear of Writing Poorly
/ 2020-04-03Just as a good man forgets his deed the moment he has done it, a genuine writer forgets a work as soon as he has completed it and starts to think about the next one; if he thinks about his past work at all, he is more likely to remember its faults than its virtues. […]
Have Your Manuscript Read Back to You on Your Computer
/ 2020-01-17Writing is a challenge. We who love to write feel joy, pain, anxiety, rage, sadness, the full gamut. After all, our work is a part of us. The stress of meeting a deadline or even just writing for fun is challenging enough, but after you’ve finished that first draft and re-edited and re-edited… and re-edited, […]
Owning Your Pockets of Time
/ 2019-11-01How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. ~Virginia Woolf I’m an […]
Correcting Other People’s Grammar
/ 2019-04-12By C. Hope Clark A suggestion . . . don’t do it. Every once in a great while, a typo or grammatical error appears in the newsletter. I have a wonderful proofreader, and, between us, we comb the newsletter each week. But hey, sometimes when the stars align and we both have a bad week, […]