May 12, 2021
In last week’s blog, Pamela S. Thibodeaux told how she had to rewrite a book in order to get it right. I’m in the early stages of my work-in-progress, but during a critique session I discovered I needed to rewrite a scene to get it right. Sounds easy enough; however, rewriting one scene may have […]
November 11, 2020
How good is your eyesight? Can you catch all of the errors in your manuscript? I’m in the process of doing a final read-through before I send my manuscript for Something to Crow About to my editor. The ms has been read, criticized, and edited by four Beta Readers. And, of course, before I sent […]
February 6, 2019
When I wrote The Crows, I thought it was a single title mystery. It wasn’t until after the The Crows was released and I was doing book talks that I was asked when the next P.J. Benson Mystery would be out. A second book? Hmm. As I wrote the second P.J. Benson Mystery (As the […]
July 5, 2017
“I’m going to self-publish because don’t want anyone changing what I’ve written!” I cringe when I hear a writer say that. Maybe the published book will be “clean” (no typos, misspellings, or poorly written sentences), but usually it will have sections that are either unclear, repetitious, or totally unnecessary. (I’ve even wished some traditionally published […]
September 16, 2015
I’ve done several critiques recently, and I’ve also had something I’ve been working on critiqued. In the process, I’ve come across five errors that all writers need to keep in mind when editing their work. 1. Rushing through a scene When working on early drafts of a story, getting the words on paper (or on […]
February 27, 2013
Are we there yet? We’ve heard that question from our kids and sometimes from our spouse. Whenever I teach a class on writing, I hear a similar question: How do you know when you’re finished? What the writer is asking is how do you know when the story you’ve written is the best it can […]