Remember to review your verbs.
While I’ve worked and taught with several bestselling writers, I learned one of my best tips from someone who wrote picture books for children.
She advised writers to print out their first two pages and circle every verb. “You don’t want,” she said, “writing that’s isy and wasy.”
Thirty years later, I’m still seeking and correcting wasy … Continue reading
Do you give yourself time to make revisions?
I could have settled for the versions of the magazine articles I’d completed a few weeks ago. I’d already gone over the layouts several times.
Since they were for the next issue, I had set them aside while I completed this one.
But today as I revisited those pages, I kept seeing aspects I could improve. … Continue reading
Better messages come in smaller packages.
Many contributors to the “chapter news” section of the magazine I edit have not yet caught on that I’m enforcing the maximum word count of 75 words. It’s my only way to include everything in a point size big enough to read.
This past week, on deadline, I had no choice but to condense the 89-, 101-, and 129-word entries. … Continue reading