Not all great hits in the world of publishing and storytelling start off with a bang. In fact, many well-known authors had ideas upon ideas for their stories, characters, and voices that were scrapped before their final drafts were produced—final drafts that might be surprising in comparison to the original ideas from which they developed.
Make the effort to form relationships with people you can trust who will challenge you. The gain is well worth the effort.
Numerous instructors of writing share the same advice when it comes to editing: resist the urge to edit while you write! Just get your ideas out, flesh them out, and worry about the fine points of editing later. But despite the numerous voices in your head and from those around you pleading for you to resist the temptation, is this really the best advice in any and every situation?
The most important thing to remember about an editor, is that they are people too (no, they are not perfect); they do have feelings. Having to deal with the stigma surrounding their profession, as well as their actual work, can be pretty overwhelming. Shouldn’t authors want to be helpful, especially for someone they will be working so closely with? Newsflash: you CAN make your editors life easier! Here is some advice that will allow you (as a writer) to ease the weight on your editor’s shoulders.
You might think that compared to writing an entire book, selecting a title would be easy. In reality, however, crafting an effective title is a finely-tuned art that usually requires a great deal of analysis and strategy on the part of the author and publishing team.
English is hard. According to the Oxford Royale Academy, it’s one of the top five most difficult languages in the world today. So why do we, as writers and especially as editors, accept making our jobs that much more difficult by using so many different style guides?
The editor must help the author express their art as truly as they can while balancing the vision of the publisher, and by extension bring the truth of the community back in the form of a published work. And, like any intimate relationship, it is not always easy, nor quick and painless.
Amid all the excitement of my book deal, having a bit of background knowledge about the inner workings of traditional publishing definitely helped keep me from getting overwhelmed.
Sleeping in My Jeans is officially one year out. While our official pub date is yet to be set, we’re planning on putting the book out sometime in November of 2018. To many, that would seem like a ton of time. What could you possibly do with an entire year until your book publishes? You’d be surprised.
From a copyeditor’s perspective, in-box article submissions can carry a vibe akin to the wild west, with authors throwing around rambunctious punctuation all willy-nilly: random ellipses with ambiguous intent, dashes dropped seemingly at random, and the mother of all punctuation faux pas, the exclamation point! What’s a periodical copyeditor to do?