I often wondered what it would be like working with an editor. I would hear my published writer friends talk about having to do their edits and revisions and making deadlines and I could only dream about someday being able to work on my own edits and revisions. When my book was picked up by…
When I ask my students if they read their papers out loud before submitting them, they usually give me a strange look, a look that seems to ask, “Well, why would we do that? What benefit will we get from that?” The answer is “A whole lot,” I tell them. Granted, my students are college…
When I was offered a contract last year by Harlequin, I was not only excited but relieved as well. I believed that my writing had finally reached the point where it was publishable. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening! I was assigned to an editor and I quickly learned that my book still…
Before You Submit Since last September, I have been a fiction reader at a literary magazine run by the Graduate English Program at Florida State University. We receive hundreds of writing submissions and those submissions are divvied up amongst different readers where each story receives several reads. I am grateful for the opportunity and I…
I laughed out loud when I read a comment to this effect on a writer friend’s Facebook page. The thought she described was familiar to me, and I suspect many other writers as they enter the world of publishing. First there is the delight of learning that someone wants to publish your beloved story. That…
The secret every one of us learns after many years of writing is that writing is not just about that flash of inspiration. It is mostly about re-writing and editing. Lots of it. When editing your chapters, I suggest the following: Read it aloud and fix any sentence that sounds stilted. Check your dialogue. Is…
You have labored for a year (or maybe more) on your book and as soon as you type “The End”, a feeling of relief and accomplishment overwhelms you right before you run to the bookshelf to get your list of literary agents and publishers. But, before you send it off, you may want to check…
In a sense, the scenes in your novel are very much like pearls. Separately, they are lovely to look at but do not really add up to much until you string them all together. It is the same way with scenes–alone, they do not mean much, but all together they can be something priceless. How…