Tag Archives: editing

If you’re thinking about becoming a writer, you might be asking yourself whether you’re “Good Enough” to go professional. The short answer is YES, because quality doesn’t matter. Let me explain: Readers read for content, not quality.  Yes, it needs to be clean and edited enough not to be distracting. I shoot for less than 1 typo in 10,000 words …

Years of publishing has taught me that a book written and published quickly can be just as good (or better) than one that took ten years to polish. Even though I have a PhD in Literature and spent nearly a decade as a book editor, I’ve seen far too many beautifully edited books fail; I’ve also spent times editing projects …

I recently watched the movie “Genius” – which is about Thomas Wolfe and the editor who got him into print. The topic is a fascinating one, something I’ve discussed in previous posts, but fleshed out in more romantic detail in the movie. In short: “genius” is the pure, uncivilized, manic, raw, passionate energy that produces the work. The book belongs …

Last week I went through my manuscript one last time and sent it out to beta readers; I’d already gone through it a dozen times, and I thought it was pretty clean. I assumed there’d be a handful of typos (there always are), and that the beta readers would catch them (they usually do). However, while usually I had one …

I used to be a full-time editor. Since then, I don’t often read amateur/mediocre books. I rarely have time to read as it is, so I only read brilliant, perfected writing. Unless I’m helping somebody out with a review, cover, or something else – in which case the book may be suffering from common rookie writing mistakes. I decided to …