The Creative Writer’s Style Guide (Christopher T. Leland)
This is a handy, accessible style guide for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. If commas confuse you or you’re not sure when to use italics, this guide may help you. Leland lays out the basics of grammar and usage and then tackles such topics as slang, offensive language, pacing, transitions, and more. Unless you’re [...]
I Was an Editorial Virgin
My first “real” editing experience was as an assistant news editor for our college paper. This meant that, for a whopping $30 a week, I spent my Friday afternoons in the Retriever Weekly offices editing other reporters’ stories while frantically trying to write and edit my own. The editorial instruction amounted to “Here, edit this.” [...]
Write a Novel and Make a Fortune!
So many people dream of being novelists. The dream is perfectly understandable: You transfer your fantasies from your brain to a blank page, an agent snatches up your masterpiece, publishers fight over it until you decide which hefty advance to accept, and before you know it your bank account is a whole lot healthier and [...]
5 Phrases to Warm Your Editor’s Heart
Okay, I was having a bad day when I wrote “5 Phrases to Raise Your Editor’s Blood Pressure.” Some authors are annoying, but they are in the minority, at least in my experience. As I wrote earlier, most of the people I have contact with are very pleasant, and I feel privileged to work with [...]
Three Bags Full (Leonie Swann)
If you have ever wondered what sheep think about throughout the day, Three Bags Full will give you an idea. This is a “sheep detective story”; in fact, it is probably the only sheep detective story you will ever read. Let’s face it, there aren’t too many flocks of sheep that are interested in solving [...]
5 Phrases to Raise Your Editor’s Blood Pressure
For the most part, editors (at least the ones I know) are mild-mannered people. Of course there are exceptions, but most of us are thoughtful, pleasant, relatively quiet folks. Likewise, most authors I encounter are a joy to work with; they need someone to spruce up their writing, and I’m able to do just that. [...]
-
Meta
