Finding a professional book editor How long should you wait? What’s reasonable? There comes a time in every good editor’s life when they build up a backlog that’s weeks or months deep, with customers waiting patiently (or not) for their services to...
I read a lot, but it’s mostly just for entertainment. It’s not often that I tell myself, “Damn, I wish I could write like that!” and start studying someone else’s work for pointers. In this essay, I’m going to tell you about someone...
Fellow writer William Shunn provides the classic format for short story formatting here (ignore at your peril). Eventually, this will become such a habitual format that you won’t have to think about it, and any other will look odd to you. Well, suppose...
In the last few years, superhero fiction has become extremely popular among writers not associated with the traditional publishing scene-and personally, I rather enjoy this trend. I’m not sure why. I never grew up reading superhero comic books, though when I was...
Is hiring a literary agent a MUST? Then versus now. Twenty years ago, the answer to the question I’ve posed in the title would be “Yes, definitely—”but only if you were writing a book. With the exception of established literary lions like Joyce Carol...
