How Does Your Environment Affect Your Writing?

This morning I woke up to a beautiful sight. I live in a wooded community, and we had snow last night. This morning the snow was still sticking to the trees. That’s rare. It gets windy up here, so snow usually blows off the trees right away. The view made me think about how this environment sometimes impacts my writing. The view this morning outside

Planning a Mini Writer’s Retreat

Sometimes everyday life gets in the way of writing (and sometimes writing is that everyday life). But in the former case, one of my favorite things to do is go somewhere else — plan a mini writer’s retreat of sorts. I’m doing that with my husband this weekend. We’re heading to a B&B called Sayre Mansion, about an hour from where we live. We stay in a

Changing Your Book’s Target Reader (After You’ve Written It)

My nonfiction book, The Query-Free Freelancer, has been moving along in an extraordinarily slow fashion. That’s due to a variety  of things (from several months of illness where I focused my limited work time on clients to simply shelving the project for a while for a fresher perspective). Now that I’m moving forward with that first draft again (my own edits to the manuscript before sending it

Why Authors Shouldn’t Try to Think Outside the Box

Creativity is defined as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc. We often hear this concept expressed as “thinking outside the box.” Authors, perhaps even more than other creative groups, feel the stress to be “truly creative.” To avoid cliches. To add stunning plot twists. To do what has never

Creating Characters from Scratch

This year I’m participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time. For those of you not familiar with the acronym, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s organized by the Office of Letters and Light. Participants begin writing on November 1st, and the goal is to write a 50,000-word  novel by midnight on November 30th. As I said, this is my first year participating, but I’ve

Breaking All the Writing Rules

Pop quiz, hot shot! How many of the old, conventional writing rules do you break on a daily basis? You probably know the ones I’m talking about. These are rules like: Never start a paper with a question. Never start a sentence with “and” or “but.” Never end a sentence with a preposition. Paragraphs must be a minimum of five sentences. There are countless more

The Role of an Editor — And Why You Should Have One

Ever wonder what an editor does? Chances are it’s a lot more than you think. It’s an editor’s job to make sure your readers can see the forest despite the trees—that they don’t get caught up on typos and mistakes that will cause them to focus on the words instead of the story. And, in the process, a good editor will look for things you

Do You Drive Through Stop Signs When Writing?

Last month Tim Berry wrote about learning that a stop sign requires a full stop—one where the car rolls backward slightly—and how that reminded him of decision making. That sometimes we all need a full stop now and again to think things through and prepare ourselves to head off again in the right direction. I couldn’t help but think of how the same concept applies

I Write Like…Me?

I recently came across a fun writing toy and I’ve just spent the last hour playing around on it. It’s not earth-shattering, nor is it going to change the world, but it does illustrate a point rather nicely. Your voice is a secret writing weapon, so use it. Here’s the toy: https://www.codingrobots.com/iwl/ “I Write Like” is a website where you essentially paste a chunk of

Compacting Your Whole Plot into Paragraphs

[This post is part of a series on writing sales copy for your book—see the first piece in the series here: The Truth About the Back of your Book.] We’re always told not to judge a book by its cover… but most people are referring to the front of the book. It’s flip side is a different matter. Without well written sales copy to convince

Messy Subjects and Verbs

This morning, as I worked with my kids at school, I realized just how often subjects and verbs get complicated and mismatched. This happens most frequently when you have more than one noun in the subject in the sentence. Consider the following: One of the boys jump over the fence. One of the boys jumps over the fence. Which one is correct? Let’s dissect them

Turn Your Blog Into a Book

It’s happening all over the web: bloggers are becoming authors. And you can too. Publishers see bloggers as a safe bet—these are people who already have a loyal audience and a solid working platform. But you don’t have to work with a traditional publisher to get your book out there; self publishing offers some serious advantages especially for the blogger-turned-author. Whichever publishing path you go

The Secret to Using Commas Correctly

Grammar, in so many ways, is like the seasoning in a soup. A dash of salt and a pinch of pepper and the soup tastes amazing—too much though, and you get an uneatable mess. Too little and you get a bland broth. In order to be a good cook, you need to know your herbs and spices. Well in order to be a good writer,

Idiotic Idioms

While we all love a good colloquialism, there is most certainly too much of a good thing at times. Idioms, or those charming expressions that don’t make any sense to anyone outside of your area, can be overused. We’ve done a bit on the more offensive and odd slang in the (American) English language, but there are plenty of more polite, if occasionally idiotic, expressions

Yay! It’s Yeah and Yea!

This is driving me crazy. I just got an email with the subject, “Yeah a Birthday Baby is Born”. I’m not sure the sender (who is not known for her grammatical prowess) meant to sound as sarcastic as the teenagers we teach, but to someone who knows the difference between “yeah”, “yea” and “yay”, she did. And just what is the difference? If you don’t

What Your Writing Says about You

Nobody’s perfect, but most of try to get as close as possible, at least in our writing. Over the years, I’ve developed a laidback approach to the grammar and spellings of others, probably because I’m bombarded with bad spelling mistakes and grammar choices on any given day. Unlike many other writers, I also feel there are markets for all sorts of writing – including the

Should You Turn Your Blog Into a Book?

Are you interested in publishing a nonfiction book? Do you already have a blog in that niche? If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, you might be a prime candidate for turning your blog into a book. This is largely what I’m doing with my own nonfiction book, The Query-Free Freelancer. I used my freelance writing blog to help me organize the book

Writing Mistakes I See Too Often

Typos are a way of life and even reviewing your own work can be tricky since you tend to read what you meant to say rather than what you actually said. Then, there is an entirely different kind of writing goofs – these aren’t accidents from your finger slipping on the keyboard. These are blatant errors and if you’re making them, you’re getting on my

Indie Publishing Teams: Who to Include

We’ve talked about the fact that indie publishing is a business. And you know that if you’re serious about selling a top notch book you can’t go it alone. That’s where your indie publishing team comes into play. As a true indie publisher (rather than just a small publishing company with in-house staff), you’ll most likely work with independent contractors. There are benefits to this:

Tricky Words: Past, Passed, Except and Accept

In the last week, two tricky word patterns have made it to my attention. This is particularly interesting since I’m not in the classroom over the summer, where I usually am assaulted by word problems. Here are my most recent scenarios: Scenario 1: The Email for Past and Passed I was asked via email about the words “past” and “passed.” The writer wanted to know

Seamless Editing

I recently had a discussion with several fellow editors about voice and style. Namely, when to leave it in and when to take it out. Every piece of writing has a natural voice to it. As an editor sometimes I have to make a decision about when to leave something that’s not wrong, but could be written clearer, and when to rework a sentence from

The Value (and Limits) of Self-Editing: Part 2

Previously I shared the editing process I came up with for my own indie published books. That process includes extensive self-editing, a professional editor, and objective beta readers. Let’s continue to look at the self-editing side of editing your books. I consider self-editing a necessity. But it’s not the be all and end all. It’s just one part of the process. There are ups and downs.

The Value (and Limits) of Self-Editing: Part 1

I have several indie publishing projects in the works right now. I’m drafting a novel. I’m planning my next e-book for my business audience. And I’m editing the manuscript for my nonfiction book, The Query-Free Freelancer. Today I’d like to talk about that editing work, and more specifically some of the ups and downs of self-editing. My Editing Process I need to make it clear

A Copy Editing Sample

A while ago I had the pleasure of working with Author Marilyn Pontuck on a book proposal–I did a copy edit of her cover letter and shared some information on the publishing world in general. She has kindly agreed to let me share a before-and-after of her work so you can see the difference that editing makes (I’m only include excerpts, to avoid making this

Grammar Police: 3 Common Grammar Mistakes

Today many people learn grammar by ear and application rather than through rules and an understanding of proper sentence structure. But there are a few quick rules you can learn that will help you avoid the grammar police. Here are a few of my favorites: Which is proper English? Most people know that there’s a difference between American English and British English, but they aren’t

Managing Multiple Publishing Projects

Can you handle more than one publishing project at a time, or do you have to be completely focused on one thing? I fall into the former group, actually thriving when other people might feel overwhelmed. And there’s no reason to push yourself to that overwhelmed status in order to handle multiple projects. You just have to know how to set limits and work with

Organization in Writing: A Lost Art

Remember the days of the five-paragraph essay? We started in elementary school learning about topic sentences and then main ideas. We threw in some supporting details, restated that topic statement and rounded that paper out. It was clean, it was simple, and yet it is fast becoming a relic we need to bring back! When you’re learning to write in a different language or looking

Help! I Is Missing Again!

At lunch the other day, a group of English teachers were laughing about some of the things we find funny in student papers. Note that we weren’t laughing at students, but at how often we see the same mistakes, and one of the funniest is that we often have no idea who is writing a paper. I fully understand why this would only be funny

The Six Biggies in Writing

There are six key strategies I teach students as they improve their basic writing skills. As a writer, it’s interesting to me how well these six elements still translate to improving my work at a professional level. When you’re paying attention to these areas of your work, you’ll start to see ways to tweak your work to make it more readable. Learning more about how

Slang and Other Nonsense in the English Language

There was a request in the comments of a previous post about understanding and using more idioms in the English language. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to dig into some of the slang and other odious expressions we bandy about – you know, the crap we say – or the words we speak that really don’t make much sense. A quick warning – if