Save on Editing and Perfect Your Writing by Engaging Beta Readers
27 January, 2014 My commitment to posting this blog weekly has been based on my understanding that to optimize searches, blogs need to appear on the same day(s) each week. Since SEO is not an urgent issue for me, I’ve decided to spare myself the burden of a weekly...
Marketing Your Book Is Outlining Your Book: Your Intention as Guidance
20 January 2014 This week I received a career memoir that the writer has been working on for 38 years. I was skeptical when he told me it was the first of five volumes. The autobiography of famous leaders usually fits in one volume, even though autobiography needs a...
Why Writers Fail at the Dating Game – and my own recent scores
13 January, 2014 If you know writers who are unhappily single, be sure to pass this advice along to them. Don’t be blatant about it – you don’t want to embarrass them. Slip it under their door when you know they’re not home. Use someone else’s printer for anonymity....
Writers Beware: Perfecting the Writing is Hard. Marketing is Also Hard
6 January, 2014 (If you read my blog last week, you’ll have been reminded that there can never be enough proofreading: “never” was written “ever” – a reversal of my intention. And today I received an email ad “Sale of the year” and under that “2013.” It’s usually the...
Succinctness and Specificity in Outlines, and best MindMap for Writers
30 December, 2013 Three years ago, I helped a client through her dissertation. She was so pressed for time that I had to hire three assistants at once to review the footnotes and 120 pages of references so I could be free to concentrate on content and writing. I...
Archiving: the Writer’s Responsibility to the Muse, to Time and Effort
23 December, 2013 An old friend happened to call this morning to ask about converting into ebooks some slim volumes he self-published a couple of years ago (in Paris, how romantic, sitting in a café over wine with an Algerian cover designer). He’s been writing poetry...
Writers: Don’t Force a Concept into a Novel. And: Enough Proofreading?
December 17, 2013 Much as I appreciate integrity in others, I try to act with integrity myself. So I’m finding myself in a quandary. At our last BAIPA meeting (www.baipa.org – our local network of people involved in all aspects of self-publishing) I offered to write a...
Hiring an Editor: Sending a Chapter of Your Writing to Several Editors
December 10, 2013 A writing colleague through my professional network of independent publishers (the PC term for self-publisher) asked if I would do a sample edit of one chapter so she could compare it to the work of other editors she was considering hiring. I have...
A Reflection for Writers on What They Expect from Their Editor
2 December, 2013 This blog usually arises from the challenge of my work week. But following the move, I ran off for a week’s vacation that had been planned a year earlier. I returned last night and have been so brain dead that I had not a thought about my professional...
Hooking Your Reader with an Original and Irresistible First Paragraph
November 15, 2013 I often read opening paragraphs of my favorite books to my clients with the intention of inspiring them to capture their reader in the first two paragraphs while symbolizing the depth of the content that will follow. So much time that I was sure I...