Most novels are written from a single character’s point of view. Think “Call me Ishmael” from MOBY DICK. Ishmael is the narrator of Herman Melville’s book and the story is told from his point of view. When you write a story from one character’s point of view, you put an instant limitation on yourself: you […]
It is no secret to most of you that writing is an up and down experience, soaring to got-a-great-idea high and sinking to everything-sucks lows. Now a writer and blogger named Seth Godin has graphed the writing/publishing experience. “Joy” is the Y axis along the bottom: You can find Seth’s blog and see hoe he […]
Here from Cormac McCarthey’s THE ROAD is a dialogue that looks a lot like many we have been receiving to edit lately: …You have to talk to me. You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was […]
It is so easy to be seduced by your own language, to be so taken with the way something you have written sounds that you completely miss the fact that it makes no sense. Almost everybody does it here and there. And then there are times when we, as editors, get lost in whole books […]
We have lots of clients who write children’s books and are continually impressed by how difficult they are to write. Fewer words doesn’t mean an easier task; it means each word has to carry a big load and therefore has to be carefully weighed and chosen, a little like writing poetry. Our friend, Karen Leggett […]
At the end of summer in 1996, the celebrated essayist John McPhee lay on a picnic table outside his back door for almost two weeks trying to begin a piece of writing for the New Yorker Magazine. As he writes in the January 14th edition of the magazine, he had never before been faced with […]
Every year, we resolve never to suggest New Year’s writing resolutions to our clients and readers. And we are not doing it this year either. But out of curiosity, we have taken an informal web survey of New Year’s resolutions for writers; there are lots out there. Most suggest pretty much the same things: setting […]