You're ready to hire an editor. Malzetov! That probably means that you've gotten to the end of your manuscript. Before you pull the trigger and hire an editor, however, hit the pause button. Then ask yourself: how do you know that the editor you're about to hire is...
For weeks I’d been trying to ignore the occasional strand of raw spaghetti that appeared by the garage door. I knew that meant that all the mouse poop I’d vacuumed up from the garage wasn’t just ancient history—I had a problem that was alive and well. I just couldn’t...
"I have a meeting with a publishing company," one of my more successful writing coach clients announced. I could hear the excitement in her voice. "They're really interested in me because of the platform I've created." "I'm not surprised," I answered. What publishing...
Those of you who are finishing up manuscripts or who have recently published books need to be thinking about promotion. I'm not just talking about media releases. Your book launch and ongoing marketing efforts can include everything from a website and book trailers to...
Writing fodder is all around us. You just have to tune in and then chronicle it on the spot. My writing coach client Wendy Coblentz is like a discriminating human tape recorder. She writes down every tidbit of humorous dialogue she overhears or participates in. Ditto...
Do you really know when to use me or I correctly, or have you joined the apparent national movement to get that wrong? I can't blame you, especially when TV stars are spreading the word—the wrong word, that is. After a long day and a last-minute blog post, I turned on...
Many of you know this hadn't been an easy time. I lost my lovely dad in April, and have barely had time to mourn him. Book deadlines and post-death financial logistics will do that to a person. Thank goodness for great friends and great laughs. And yes, you can even...
During a marathon writing coach session, my client and I marched through the manuscript he needed to revise. For months he had written sloppy copy. I helped create order out of all that rough draft material, but now we wanted to make sure that both the manuscript and...
So there I was this morning getting ready to hop in the shower as the TV news played in the background. Then the show went to commercial and I quit paying attention. Until, that is, I heard the grammar mistake. Can you spot it? Talk to a local Allstate agent and...
A friend and writing coach client, Art Samson, the author of The Captains' Airline: Pushing Back From The Brink, is drafting a new preface for his novel. So many high-visibility, non-U.S. airplane accidents have occurred since his book came out in 2012, that Art wants...
