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The The Impotence of Proofreading

December 15, 2011

 
I’m skipping a day in the Novel Writing 101 series to bring you this:
I know I’m going a bit over the line with this one, but it is just too funny to pass up.
A writer friend of mine reminded me of this very funny presentation about proofreading.  If you have ever trusted your spell checker [...]

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Novel Writing 101: The Hard Part

December 14, 2011

Novel Writing: 101
Actually, there is some debate about which part of the novel writing experience is the hardest part, and I can see why people feel that way.
I’ve got a writer friend who answers, with a crooked smile, ‘the hardest part of writing a novel is the part I’m currently doing.‘
We’ve “talked” about a good [...]

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Translating Your Novel to English

October 17, 2011

 
One of the marks of success for a novel is the number of languages it is translated into for International sales.  Proud we would be, and rightly so, to hear that our book is doing well in France, or Germany, in Belgium, or Brazil.  But of course, there is a catch to that wondrous level [...]

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This is the End

July 14, 2011

 
How Do You Know When Your Novel is Finished?
 
Zinger of a question, yes?
The definition of “finished” is probably the biggest thing at stake here.

Does finished mean you got to what feels like the last page?
Does it mean that your characters have nothing more to do?
Does it mean that you’ve reached a climax that your readers [...]

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When Flying Low Doesn’t Help

April 6, 2011

One of the hardest things that you, as a writer, must do is to sometimes remove perfectly good writing from your novel.
What’s that, you ask?
Yeah.  It’s a sad day when you’ve just finished a beautiful… no, startlingly beautiful passage, one that moves emotions, engages all of the senses, entertains and more… and you realize you [...]

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Anyone Can Write a Book

February 8, 2011

I’m not in the best of moods, just now.  Please consider this fair warning.
If you have written for any length of time—and have come out of the closet about it, so to speak—I am sure you have heard the infamous words, “I could (should) write a book”.  The phrase is almost invariably followed with something [...]

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Controlling Your Reader's Experience

April 19, 2010

Want to know the secret of controlling the way your reader reads and perceives your work?  Yeah.  So do I.
The best I can tell is there isn’t one.
Perhaps I’m beginning to sound like a broken record—(oops: obsolete cultural reference!)—unless we, as writers, can find away to hack the brains of our readers, there is no [...]

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Mandy Ward: Guest Blogger – Pt. 6

April 15, 2010

Continued from Part 5
Read the whole series starting with Part 1

Learn to Edit
I had to learn to edit what I had written. I dragged out my Copy Editing course and went through it again, using an old story. I had to practice editing as much as I had to practice writing.

By now I’d joined a [...]

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The One on One Method

April 9, 2010

Some ideas are just too good to keep to yourself.  The One on One Method is just such an idea.
Elsewhere I have suggested that one of the best ways to “road test” your writing is to read it back twice before allowing others to see it.
I’ve suggested that the first read be a [...]

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Getting In the Picture – Blogging: 101 Pt. 34

March 22, 2010

Continued from Part 33

See the whole series starting with the first post
Adding graphics to your Blog is considered to be a must for the generation of traffic, and a professional look and feel.
While doing so will do much to improve your Blog, you will find that the search, downloading, editing and managing graphics, especially photographs, [...]

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