“Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871 So you’re finally ready to get honest? You’re finally ready to admit that your writing is no good? Congratulations. Welcome to
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Of course, I’d heard the word for years. Discipline. But as a lifelong rebel, I’ve always associated it with restriction and not getting what I wanted. I gave my mom the hardest time trying to train me. It’s a good thing I turned out so awesome so I can prove how hard she worked. Discipline is like editing. Mom was
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The difficulty of consistency in writing is greatly exacerbated by authors fearing that the situations and characters in their heads aren’t quite unique enough or imaginative enough. And this angst can effectively kill an author’s enjoyment of the daily work. The mountain of their vision seems too high to climb. Yet let them close their eyes to the hill and simply
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There’s a misconception I’d like to put to rest. Freelance editors are not expendable. Freelance content editors are the unsung heroes of publishing. Though it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn, I’m not. And this idea may not make me popular among my industry friends and colleagues. Yet as publishing continues to change, I see too many good writers, mid-listers and professional authors being
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Dearest Author, I've been thinking about worth lately. What's your story worth? At a recent writers conference I taught a workshop on how I saw publishing changing. Modern publishing, the only time in history when we've had separate "markets" for books, has begun to fracture and redistribute. I've shared several times about how The Shack has shifted things. It isn't
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