How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

I've talked about revision before, but there's a difference between revision and editing, although I usually do both at the same time. Revision, at least in my opinion, involves changes at the plot/character level, whereas editing involves smaller technical changes, things on the sentence level instead of the scene level. Along those lines, Sylvia Rochester has a post over at Heart of Louisiana that has tons of good editing tips for polishing up a manuscript that I'm not going to repeat here. They're all great tips and things that every writer should employ during the course of writing. The thing that I have to keep in mind is that, while all these editing tips are useful, they are only useful in the contest of the story that I'm telling. So, for example, most of my main characters are teenagers. Teenagers have a certain cadence and method of expressing themselves that are unique to teenagers (as a stage of development), and then on top of that, there are laye...

1. The Intern has an interesting post a couple of weeks ago about another reason why an author might not want to read your manuscript: if she did, you could sue her .* 2. The one reality show that I never get tired of is The Amazing Race, which is just what it sounds like -- a bunch of people in teams of two race around the world. It's not as annoying as other reality shows for two reasons: (1) there is not much advantage for the teams to form alliances or backstab each other, because the performance of other teams doesn't have a lot to do with how your team performs; and (2) there are no judges and no voting. Period. The team that shows up last gets eliminated (usually). So it's really a bunch of people (some of whom are awesome, and some of whom are less than awesome) racing around the world and doing really cool stuff. 3. Some day, I'm going to hire out my laundry. Seriously. There are very few chores I absolutely hate, but laundry is one of them. 4. P!nk...

First things first, if you're interested in following publishing industry stuff in a regular way, you MUST read Maya Reynolds' blog . She's excellent at (a) staying on top of major developments and (b) explaining them in clear language, along with their implications. This post was inspired, in part, by her reportage. So, as you may have heard, Amazon is the current market leader in the sales of ebook readers. It's Kindle has, according to some reports, 68% of the market share for ebook devices. Unfortunately, Amazon hasn't been a very benevolent monopolist in the book market in general. It's been dictatorial with authors who want to self-publish, requiring its own print-on-demand service . It even attempted, in January of this year, to coerce publisher Macmillan into accepting its terms by removing the buy buttons from that publisher's books when Macmillan wouldn't agree to let Amazon set the price of its ebooks at $9.99 (Macmillan wanted the abi...

Agent Kristin had a post recently about something that I CANNOT BELIEVE. Apparently, one of the publishing houses has reverted back to PAPER CONTRACTS because some agent unlocked a PDF (there's technology for this) and MADE CHANGES TO THE CONTRACT without the publishing house's permission. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? As an attorney who deals regularly with contracts I can tell you that, if someone did this to me, I would fly off the handle so quickly that I would break the sound barrier. I have made lawyers cry before, and I am NOT AFRAID to do it again. ~~~ * Allow me to apologize for the overuse of the capital letter in this post, but I just can't help myself. This kind of thing makes me very angry. This is, simply put, unethical behavior. When you do a deal, you negotiate the terms and then you put the terms into a contract. You DO NOT attempt to sneak terms into the deal that you were unable to get in the negotiation. If you lost a point in negotiation, or gave it up ...

1. You may know Julia Stiles from the fact that she's a pretty famous actress whose been in a bunch of stuff (like Save the Last Dance , for example). What you may not know is that she has a blog, and it's pretty interesting. She doesn't post very often, but her stuff is usually worth reading and she seems really cool.* You can check her blog out here: You Know My Steez . 2. I tried last year to start a one sentence journal, where you write a single sentence a day, but it just doesn't work for me. I keep forgetting to write in it for, like, weeks at a time. I'm much better at writing my three paragraphs a day (as recommended by Bryan Garner). For some reason a bigger committment works better for me. But Leah Dieterich's blog --where she posts a thank you note a day, sometimes to things that you wouldn't normally think of as being grateful for -- is awesome. Some recent favorites of mine include: Dear Neon Yellow Highlighter Dear Future See you when...

Earlier this month, agent Janet Reid had an encounter with a writer over the phone. You can read about it here. That's not the crazy part. No, the crazy part is that when Janet stated that she could not help the writer over the phone*, the writer got mad and sent Janet an email saying that she was rude. HA! You know what's rude? Emailing someone to tell them that they're rude. Seriously. But that brings me to my point, which is this: you are not entitled to help. Ever. Not in life, and especially not in pursuit of your goal of becoming a published writer. Now, a lot of people will probably help you. I personally have had the help of the many people in my fledgling writing career. Teachers, friends, other writers, agents, writing groups, fan fiction beta readers, fan fiction readers...many many many people have helped me, out of the goodness of their hearts, for free, because they wanted to. But I wasn't entitled to that help. I didn't "deserve"...

This week over at Editorial Ass , Moonrat asked an interesting question about self image of characters in YA stories. Here's the question in her words: Which kind of heroine do you think is better in YA fiction--one with a really positive self-image (to promote self-confidence in teen readers), or one with a flawed self-image (e.g. someone who has always felt like a misfit, who has never been labeled conventionally pretty, etc, to promote reader identification)? The comments are pretty interesting, but I find myself disagreeing with the premise. I don't write, and I don't know many other writers who write to promote an agenda. I'm sure they're out there--the "message" writers--but I don't have any personal experience with them. I, personally, don't write to promote self confidence in readers. That's not to say that I don't care about the effect of characters on readers, because I do. I'm all about characters and their effects o...