Archive for the 'Editing' Category

8 Reader Questions–8 Parts of Speech

“The new writer found she wrote best thinking of her readers’ questions–and how!”   This sentence contains all you need to know about writing a story. You may want to commit it to memory. I recently discovered something I think may help new writers remember everything they need to write amazing stories quickly. Usually, beginning writers simply write what speaks to
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Hold That Ideal Loosely

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.” – Ira Glass What makes it so difficult to know what we’ve said is knowing so well what we meant to say. Missing the mark. It’s a definition of sin. There’s a lot of talk these days about the “gifts of imperfection” and embracing
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Letter to an Anonymous Author

“I am a writer. Therefore, I am not sane.” ― Edgar Allan Poe Dear X, I appreciated your note, my friend. And I’m grateful for it. I’ve seen your struggle and I know how hard you’re working to progress and capture everything well, and also accept help. I knew your journey would be a special challenge, and while your issues
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How We May Finally Recover Ourselves

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot   The life of faith is a rescue mission, I thought, listening to our pastor preach on the woman at the well in yesterday’s sermon. He explained how
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Why Writing Alone Is Impossible

Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazzards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom.  – Joyce Carol Oates We all believe this fallacy that writing is a solitary sport. Of course we write alone. At least, that’s what we tend to think. It’s not a team activity. It’s one writer, sometimes two,
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