Real Talk for Writers

It's time to talk about the least favorite stage of the publication process for most authors: Pass pages.

If you've never done pass pages before, this is when your publishing team has taken your copyedited manuscript and formatted it for printing. It's often the first time you're seeing the specifi...

Welcome to the first in a four-part series of essential skills for published novelists!

Full-disclosure: I started this as one big post of essential skills for debuts... and then quickly realized a two things:

1 - I had way too much to say to confine this to one post

2 - These are skills that a...

"What do I do if my first draft is genuinely a heaping pile of garbage?"

We've all had a moment like this. You've finished the first draft, maybe even let it sit and cool off for a few days or weeks, and then you dive in to figure out what you need to revise before the book goes off to your editor....

Copyedits! CEs! The least favorite part of the editing process for may authors, this is the stage where a Grammar Nerd descends upon your book with a digital red pen and point out all your mistakes. 

It's also the part where many authors decide they hate their book actually, and can they set the wh...