Do you know how many words you typically write per hour? Do you know how long you can sustain that rate? This is a critical number to know when estimating how long a project will take. We need this for meeting deadlines and for quoting projects. Without having a firm grasp of our typical writing […]
I was reading one of those college textbooks that send you to the dictionary every other paragraph. Progress was tedious. Most of the words I needed help with weren’t in the dictionaries I consulted, so I’d google the word, hoping to figure it out through context. Sometimes I’d stumble upon a cogent explanation, but often […]
Avoid using “it was,” “that was,” and “this was”—among other things I hired a developmental editor to give me big-picture feedback on my novel. Though her comments overall encouraged me, I have several things to work on and fix. One was that I used the innocuous phrase “it was” too often. How often? It popped […]
When you want to advance as an author, the cost-effective solution is to hire outside help Tip #7 in my post “10 Tips to Improve as a Writer” is to not be afraid to pay for help. As a financially frugal person, this was a hard lesson for me to learn. When I entered the […]
Common sense tips, that most people skip, to increase the chances of having your writing submission accepted in magazines and websites: As a magazine, newsletter, and website publisher, I’ve received thousands of article submissions over the years. Some of the writers are easy to work with and others are more of a chore. If you […]
When I was in grade school I learned that to make a word possessive you simply added ’s to the end of it. That was easy. Oh, and there was one exception. If the word already ended in s, you simply added the apostrophe. Okay, I got it. Then, when my kids were in high […]
As a magazine publisher, I edit every submission I receive. Yes, every single one. (And then a proofreader fixes everything I miss.) Though some submissions are in much better shape than others, each one receives some changes. In fifteen years, I’ve never ever accepted a submission without making at least a few edits. I may […]
Another blogging tip is to proof and then publish. That is, once written, review with care and post without delay. It’s that simple. Some beginning bloggers are afraid to share what they write. They fear it’s not good enough or people will criticize their words. They talk themselves into waiting until it’s better. They search […]
It’s hard for most people to proof their own writing. I’m no exception. For my magazines, I hire a proofreader to check my work and the other submissions that will appear in each issue. For my books, I pay a copy editor to catch my errors. For blogs, I rely on my wife and friends […]
Proofing your own work is hard for most people. After all, you know what you intended to say, so that is what you tend to see when you proofread your writing. Proofing is a huge challenge for me, as you have likely seen in past posts. I am much more likely to catch errors when […]