Will your readers enjoy the journey?
The other weekend, I started reading two novels. I’d not meant to begin the second so soon, but after several attempts to engage with the first, I gave up.
They were both mass paperback international thrillers. Despite my interest in plot of the first, its prose reminded me of a bad gravel road.
I’d recently encountered such a washboard road … Continue reading
Three drafts are likely not enough.
How many drafts does it take to perfect a novel? According to one veteran writer, at least four.
In his Facebook post this past weekend, Ace Andrew Collins mentioned he has “signed contracts with publishers for 96 releases: 42 nonfiction, 28 novels, and 26 youth books.” So it’s fair to say he knows something about writing success.
A few days … Continue reading
Never rely on spell-check.
My excuse is that the magazine’s news section is huge, 8,600 words, assembled from more than 100 contributions.
My error was that I rushed this project, putting too much faith in the spell-checker. Yes, the red squiggles in Word alerted me to ones spelled wrong. But no alarm sounded when a wrong, correctly spelled word was used.
English has dozen of … Continue reading