First Page Critique

  I’m currently teaching my First Five Pages class at Lawson Writer’s Academy (psst – you can still sign up!) I love helping writers strengthen their all-important openings. Joe Zarek is one of my past students, and has agreed to allow me to share his ‘before and after’ first page. Kudos to him for working so…

Read More

The Edit That May Kill You – and Why to Soldier On

I’m writing a women’s fiction. Again. I’m glad I haven’t kept track of how many times I’ve rewritten this one and I’m not looking it up. because I’m not a masochist. I wrote it the first time. I loved it. My agent loved it. Editors? They loved the story and the secondary character, but not…

Read More

Essentials of a Writer’s Library – Part II – Editing

  As promised, this is the second in my ‘Writer’s Library’ series. This segment is harder for me, because I hate editing with the passion of a kid having to eat asparagus. But, as Patricia Fuller said, ‘Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.’ So…

Read More

The Most Important Edit No One Talks About

Everyone knows what I call the 10,000 foot edit – it’s the content/developmental edit – it’s looking at your story from a plane, to spot the plot mountains and canyons that need to be fixed. Genre no-no’s? Unsatisfying ending? That night with the weasel scene? Everyone knows about ground level edits – copy/line/stylistic edits that…

Read More