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If you’re a writer, you must edit and revise your work at some point in the creation process. This will help polish up your prose and allow your work to shine. First drafts are rarely perfect, even when written by experienced professional writers. This will have the added benefit of improving your credibility as a writer.
Not so much functionally—there are people who can help you write cleaner prose. I hire a copyeditor to clean up my posts, and while the ideas, connections, turns of phrase, overall structure and layout are mine, it still feels inauthentic. Write with a copyeditor. So here’s my response. Persistence pays.
Show Notes Tips for being a prolific writer Reasons why authors write darker books Scheduling separate times for writing different genres Creating a successful co-writing relationship What is a series of standalone? Writing was never something that I kind of foresaw as a career because I never thought it was achievable to become a writer.
Recently, a question that went something like this appeared in a Facebook group for writers seeking help from book editors: Help with this sentence please! A friend said it should be “whoever” and my editor said “whomever.” For writers striving to improve. Some advice, for whoever/whomever is interested.” How do you vote?
A writing coach or an editor might have wagged a finger at McBride and told him to kill that darling. It’s different from emerging to resent the copyeditor; appreciating the prose is part of reading for pleasure. . A writer who deploys a long sentence had better know what they’re doing and why. It did distract me.
Jack Hart has spent five decades helping writers succeed, working shoulder-to-shoulder with journalists in newsrooms both big and small and with students at five universities. Writers who’ve worked with him have written national best sellers and won prizes that include five Pulitzers and a slew of other national awards.
Writers can’t be blamed if they’re confused! But somewhere in the last century, the shouty little mark fell out of fashion in literary prose. Editors today frown on excessive exclaiming even in mainstream fiction, outside of books for young children and comic books. How is a writer to choose? O how my eyes overflow!
Creative writers sometimes mangle grammar on purpose or get creative with punctuation. commenters told a writer that “breathe deep” was incorrect, as opposed to “breathe deeply.” The grain of truth: “Said” followed by a pronoun (“said she”) is more at home in poetry or highly lyrical prose. In short, no one got it right.
Georgina: Like a lot of authors that you've interviewed, I always wanted to be a writer as a child, and I was that kid with the desk in her bedroom, who would sit there and write books, even if it was just on notebook paper. Joanna: It's going to be interesting to talk to you today. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.
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