The Checklist

For those few faithful followers while I have been reviewing Self Editing for Fiction Writers, thanks. I hope I gave you enough information to impact your writing for the better. I want to thank Renni Browne and Dave King as well. You book made such a difference. And I agree, writing and editing are two very separate skills, that should not be used at the same time. Thank you so much for that principle.

I went back through the book, reading just the pericopes I highlighted. From those, I created a 'checklist' which I now bring up on my computer when I edit something I have written (Sorry, I just cannot desecrate my Mac by taping it to the side of the monitor. I put what I am working on left side of the screen, and my checklist on the right).

Here is my checklist. I reduced it down to some keywords, that would remind me of what I learned and the skills I want to polish. I encourage you to purchase the book, study it, and create your own.

Show and Tell

Characterization

            Do it slow

                       Only what is needed, when it is needed

No Exposition

Scene

            Only what is needed

Point of View

            Keep POV same

                        Plot, scene

            Intimate/Distance

            Details match emotion

            1st Sentence

Proportion

            Heavy/Light

            Flow

            Advance Plot/Character

            Control/Mislead

Dialogue

            Said

            -ly

            Beats

            No Exposition

            Dash/Ellipses

            No Mumbling

How Does it Sound?

            Contractions

            Flow

            Formality

            Have characters misunderstand

            No dialect or strange spelling

            Read it out loud

Interior Monologue

            Use Sparingly

            Make it unobtrusive

            No thinker interior

            No italics

            Emotions (opposite)

Beats

            Breakup long dialogue

            Should come easily

            Not too often

            Don't interrupt flow

            Use when emotions change

            Where to use

            What type of beat

Breaking Up

            White Space

            Paragraph tension

            Very paragraph length (flow)

            Set the reader up

            Change rhythm

Once is Enough

            Words

            Characters

            Scenes

            Plots

            Books

            Use only when absolutely needed

              (And then be very careful)

Sophistication

            As

            -ing

            No clichés

                        Or turn the cliché

            -ly

            Use commas

                        Short, incomplete sentences

            No "quote marks" or italics

            No poetic speeches

            No pet soapbox lectures

                        Move plot along or nothing

Voice

            Read scenes

                        Mark good/bad

                        Good = your voice

            Authorial Voice

            Character Voice

           

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Voice

Okay, this review is of the last chapter in Self Editing for Fiction Writers. Again, I cannot tell you enough how beneficial this book has been to me and I really challenge you to get read all of the chapter reviews I have blogged. Then, please, I beg, get yourself a copy. It will sharpen your writing skills. As usual, my comments are in parentheses.



The final chapter in the book is simple titled Voice. But it is more that what I thought it would be.To begin, a little listening exercise. Please take a few minutes, less than two actually, and see if this fellow has found his voice:

A strong, distinctive, authoritative writing voice is something most fiction writers want-and something no editor or teacher can impart.

...a distinctive, high tension voice, one the writer had worked hard to develop and maintain. Unfortunately, the voice was so distinctive that ALL of his characters sounded alike.  (This is what I meant when I stated this chapter was more than what I thought it would be. There is the author voice (think of classic authors) and then there is the character's voice. Don't mix the two!)

When an amateur tries deliberately for the sort of mature voice found in seasoned professionals, the result is likely to be pretentious and largely unreadable. (Note 'deliberately'. More on this later.)

Style and voice are NOT interchangeable. (Purchase the book, read page 219)

Remember, your primary purpose as a writer of fiction is to engage your readers in your story in the best way you can. When your style starts to overshadow your story, it's defeating that purpose.

A warning though. Don't let the danger of literary pretentiousness frighten you into a minimalism that doesn't fit your natural voice.

If you have a poetic turn of mind, you can let it out of it's cage from time to time. You just need to remember the other principles we have talked about, such as proportion.

Remember that even those writers with the most distinctive voices did not develop those voices over night. (Meaning, you have to keep writing to find your authorial voice.) Melville simply couldn't have written Omoo in the voice he used for Moby Dick. He just wasn't ready. In order to write a mature voice, you have to mature first. (I remember foolishly wishing I could be a writer as far back as high school. But I was not ready. Some people are, I believe that. Some are destined to be writers very early in life. But most of us have to mature, particularly the more serious the genre we write in. I am thinking Hemingway, Hugo, Lee, etc. I was not mature enough to really grasp my stories (and hence they did not come to me until I was ready) until I was past fifty.)

(Read this part carefully) But though you shouldn't consciously work on your voice as a writer, there is a way to encourage it when you get to the self-editing stage.  (What follows is a wonderful exercise. Again, I do not want to reveal everything here. Doing so would be disrespectful to Browne and King, and it would be stealing royalties from them. I will not do that, at least I hope I am not doing that. Every writers deserves the blessing of being paid for their work. So buy the book. Simply really. I am going to do this exercise with my short stories first, just for fun and to see if it reveals to me where my voice is, if I have found it or not, and if I have found it, do I recognize it.)

Every voice is distinct, because it belongs to a character with a distinct personality and sensibility. (Make sure you read, understand and take to heart what I write at the end of this blog. It will be in bold text.)

Reading aloud consecutively all the passages written from each major character's point of view can help you spot any places where a character's voice doesn't fit the character.

 

(When you find your voice, so will everyone.)

You have a writing voice. Each of your characters have a voice as well. They are not the same voice. Find them and set them free.

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Next week, I will be blogging a checklist I have made and taped to my Mac (a sacrilege to be sure). The checklist are bullet points of each chapter, boiled down as far as I could get them. Perhaps they will be of benefit to you as well, or perhaps, it will inspire you to create your own.

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Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication, The AS and -ING of Bad Style

Notes, highlight, thoughts and frustrations from Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Chapter 11, Sophistication

As per my previous chapter reviews of this very helpful book on writing, my thoughts are encased with parenthesis. I hope this helps someone out there, besides me.

~~~~~~~~~~

One easy way to make your writing seem more sophisticated is to AVOID two stylistic constructions that are common to hack writers, namely:

"Pulling off her gloves, she turned to face him."
and:
"As she pulled of her gloves, she turned to face him."

Both the as construction and the -ing construction as used above are grammatically correct and express the action clearly and unambiguously...if you use these constructions often, you weaken your writing.

Another reason to avoid the as and -ing construction is they can give rise to physical impossibilities. (There is one solution to this problem on page 194, if you care to purchase the book yourself! In fact, page 195 has an example with, then without, the as and -ing constructs. I must say, the latter does read better.)

Another way to keep from looking like an amateur is to avoid the use of cliches (Amen)...When you fall into characterizations like these (a list of common cliches), the result is a cartoon rather than a character.

There is one caveat: in narration, there may be times when you need to use a familiar, pet phrase-yes, a cliche, to summarize a complicated situation. But before going with a cliche, give some thought to the possibility of 'turning it', altering it slightly to render the phrasing less familiar.

In Chapter 5 (I blogged on it here), we warned you to watch out for -ly adverbs when you are writing dialogue. (Stephen King said the same thing in On Writing, if I recall correctly.) But even when you are not writing dialogue, be on the lookout for -ly adverbs, for the sake of sophistication. (The next few paragraphs offer some great suggestions on resolving this problem.)

This approach may be all right for a first draft, but when you self-edit, you can root out these verb-adverb combinations like the weeds they are. (I like that metaphor.)

When you use two words, a weak verb and an adverb, to do the work of one strong verb, you dilute your writing and rob it of its potential power.

A simple departure from conventional comma usage can also lend a modern, sophisticated touch to your fiction-especially your dialogue...This comma usage, if not overdone, conveys remarkably well the way speech actually falls on the ear.

There are a few stylistic devices that are so "tacky" they should be used very sparingly.(I just gave you one, there are three others in the book, one involves sex. Really. It does.)

What is true of sexual details is also true of profanity...profanity has been so overused in the past years that nowadays it's more a sign of a small vocabulary. (A great, humorus example follows.)

The surest sign that you are achieving literary sophistication is when your writing begins to seem effortless, not that it will be effortless, of course.

The goal of all this careful, conscious work is to produce a novel or short story collection as though there no hard labor were involved in producing it. Fred Astaire worked tirelessly to make dancing look like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. And that is what you are tying for.





Please, stay off the damn walls. I just painted.

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The Redundant, Revenant Recidivist

Notes, highlights, comments and thoughts from Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Chapter 10, Once Is Usually Enough. Use them or lose them.

"Despite its tireless narrative energy, despite its relentless inventiveness, the book is bloated, grown to elephantine proportions... Repetition is the problem; the same stories are told several times, accruing more dealt in with each telling. Also, the principal characters have a way of regurgitating what they've learned, even through the reader was with them when they learned it."
Patrick McGrath, in a New York Times review of
The Witching Hour, by Anne Rice.

The problem Mr. McGrath describes is one we see regularly in the writing of both novices and professionals; unintentional repetition.

The repetition of an effect can be just as problematic. Whether it's two sentences that convey the same information, two paragraphs that establish the same personality trait, or two characters who fill the same role in a plot, repetition can rob your story of its power.

In fact, repetition is likely to weaken rather then intensify the power of that effect.

When you try to accomplish the same effect twice, the weaker attempt is likely to undermine the power of the stronger one.

Just call it a CAR!

One form of repetition that we've seen more often in recent years is the use of brand names to help characterization. The mention of what type of scotch hour hero drinks or what kind of car your heroine drives may help give your readers a handle on their personalities. But when all your characters glance at their Rolexes, then hop into their Maseratis to tear out to the house in the Hamptons, where they change out of their Armanis to pour themselves a Glenliovet-you've gone too far.

Interior monologue is also prone to needless repetition.

Keep an eye out for unconscious repetitions on the smallest scale-especially repetitions in which the repeated word isn't used in the same sense as the original word. ("She heard a sharp crack, the loud spring of her bedsprings.")

A fringe benefit of getting rid of unnecessary repetitions is that it frees up the power of intentional repetitions.

Why would you want to repeat an effect? Roshomon Technique!

As you come to see what each element of your story-each sentence, each paragraph-accomplishes, you can learn o accomplish more than one thing at a time.

If each element of your story accomplishes one thing and one thing only, then your story will subtly, almost subliminally, feel artificial. When everything seems to be happening all at once, then it will feel like real life.

Another way in which the writers indulge in the large scale overkill is in the creation of the characters.

Then there is repetition on the largest scale, from book to book...of course, there is room in the world of fiction for the formulaic novel, it's been said that every James Bond novel has the same plot. (Oh, don't get me started. IF any of you EVER think that I am writing the same plot, over and over again, by simply changing the character names and the location, then, please, do not shoot me in the ass. Aim higher and put an end to my drivel.) (I refuse to read formulaic novels.)


~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for following (Get the hint?). I hope this is helpful to someone out there. It has certainly improved my writing. Please comment and share the blog. Who knows, it may make the difference to someone. 

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Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Chapter 9, Breaking Up is Easy To Do

"It's like a woman with a dead baby inside her."

Got your attention, didn't I?

Before I write about the next chapter in Self Editing for Fiction Writers, I HAD to share this metaphor. It is from a pericope in the book  and when I read it, I was so stunned, I knew I had to include it when I blogged tonight. In fact, the skin on my forearms turned to goose flesh. I put the book down and just sat there for about ten minutes, pondering the depths.

The character who speaks the metaphor is a man who is losing his faith in God. It if from Fredrick Buechner's Treasure Hunt. It reads: "You don't know how it feels to say things you don't believe any more. It's like a woman with a dead baby inside her."

I am terrible at metaphors. I struggle with them and as a result, I probably do not use them often enough nor effectively. If anyone out there know of a good website or book on how to write and use metaphors, please leave me a comment. I could use the help.

In my book, this metaphor is the best I have ever read.

~~~~~~~~~~

For those who are just now finding my blog (and thanks to those from the Kindle Community who faithfully follow) I have been 'reviewing' Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. It is quite a remarkable book and I have learned much. You can surf my blog to find the previous eight chapters (and some worthless stuff as well).

What follows are the highlights that caught my eye in Chapter 8. I do not want to put too much of the book here, because I really think every aspiring writer should have this book right next to their computer or Royal typewriter. So, if the highlights do to make sense, buy the book. It's that simple. My thoughts are in parenthesis. Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~

Another editing technique produces the dramatic difference between the two versions (two pericopes precede this highlight): the first is a single, page long paragraph; the second has been broken up into more manageable chunks. The second version has white space.

Whether it's because readers feel lectured to, or because they feel crowded, or simply because some white space on the page is visually inviting, lengthy unbroken chunks of written material are off-putting.

Paragraphing frequently can also add tension to a scene.

A novel that is basically a page-turner beginning to end is more likely to leave its readers feeling weary-and manipulated-than satisfied.

The leisurely and soft-edged tone to the details help lull the reader into a relaxed moment- to a purpose, since we are being set up.

Be on the lookout for places where your characters make little speeches to one another. In formal dialogue, characters often string together four or five complete, well-formed sentences. In real life, few of us get that far without interruptions. (I detest be interrupted when I am speaking! But it is true. Homework assignment: During the day tomorrow, count how many times you are interrupted when you are speaking AND count how many times you interrupt someone).

If the scene or chapter remains steady while the tension of the story varies considerably, you are passing up the chance to reinforce the tension your story depends on. You are failing to use one of the simplest of storytelling tools.

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Backseat Bingo! Oh those were the days! I remember Maynard's big tickle and all the Cubes were so frosted. But, Big Daddy, life sure is Grody Sloppy, dig it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Chapter 8-Easy Beats!
You ready Hipsters?

(As usual, my thoughts and comments on in parentheses. All the other kicks are just there, man.)

Beats are the bits of action interspersed through a scene, such as a character walking to a window or removing his and rubbing his eyes- the literary equivalent of what is known in the theater as 'stage business'.

As with interior monologue, it's very easy to interrupt your dialogue so often that you bring its pace to a halt.

As with the Fran Dorf example at the beginning of the chapter, there is wonderful dialogue in here (another example)-surrounded by so many beats, both internal and external, that its effect is lost. The fact that the beats themselves are interesting and well written doesn't keep the constant interruptions from irritating the reader.

As with physical description, some writers may overuse beats because they lack confidence. After all, if you show every move your character makes, your readers are bound to be able to picture the action you describe...when you describe every bit of action down to the last detail, you give your readers a clear picture of what's going on but you also limit their imagination-and if you supply enough detail, you'll alienate them in the process.

Of course, it is possible to err in the other direction and include too few beats. Page after page of uninterrupted dialogue can become disembodied and disorienting after a while, even if the dialogue is excellent.


What's needed are a few beats to anchor [your dialogue] in reality.


The idea is to strike the right balance between dialogue and beats.

So what's the right balance? (see page 149!)

Knowing where to put your beats is not as important as knowing what beats to insert.

Beats can be pointless, distracting, cliched, or repetitive.

So where do you find good beats? (Oh, the tip offered here has kept me busy all week. Page 152 folks!)

(The last two pages of the chapter consist of an example with and then without beats.) The scene is still moving-the dialogue effectively conveys what's going on and its importance, and it's easy to tell who is speaking. What is lost is a great deal of resonance, the deepening of the emotional content. You need beats for those.

Dig it!

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(Same guidelines as previously. My  wayward thoughts and comments are in parenthesis.)

Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Chapter 7, Interior Monologue

One of the greatest gifts of literature is that it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts: interior monologue...allowing your readers to see what your character is thinking is a powerful, intimate way to establish that character's personality.

Constant interruptions are just as annoying on the page as they are in life, and this writer (from an example in the book, which you need to purchase anyway) has interrupted her dialogue with interior monologue over and over again.

So how do you know you've gone too far with interior monologue?
(See answer on page 118)

It is also possible to have too little interior monologue.

(A one page example of dialogue, between a husband and wife, without any interior dialogue, then:)
But her (the character in the example) exhaustion and intimidation need to be present in the scene as well as in the context. She doesn't stop feeling these things while she is on the phone with him. Because she's too intimidated to confront him, the writer can't show her feelings in dialogue. It would be difficult  to work Nia's specific feelings into emotionally weighted descriptions without breaking up the rhythm of the dialogue.

So what's the right amount of interior monologue?
(See answer on page 122)

(Throughout the book, there are several cartoons to emphasis a point. In this chapter, there is one that I found especially humorous. In the single panel, we see two women, sitting at a table, in a very sparse room. The caption reads exactly as follows: "So far all her dreams have not come true but she wants high romance and a baby while her husband want to be, and is, a very successful broker, who takes graduate courses at night and wants no baby and at the same time she has more or less recovered from being in love with the well-digger who dug her well, which is good since he is married with three children and is a drug addict and an alcoholic and he claims he's dying, although there are no signs of this and she says once she finds an outlet for her unrequited love she will lose eighty-five pounds.  I enjoyed that sentence." (Get it?)

(Oh, here is a great one:) It's rarely a good idea to have your characters mumble to themselves or speak under their breath.

How to handle your interior monologue depends almost entirely on your narrative distance. (I am still trying to wrap my mind around 'narrative distance'. I will work on it more the second time I go through this book.)

Thinker attributions.

Whenever you're writing from a single point of view-as you will be ninety percent of the time-you can simply jettison thinker attributions.

Another technique for setting off interior monologue sharply is to write in the first person (often with italics) when you narrative is in third...Effective as this technique can be in letting readers into your character's head, be careful not to use it too often.

Interior dialogue can easily become a gimmick, and if overused it can make your characters seem as if they have multiple-personality disorder.

Generations of hacks have used italics to punch up otherwise weak dialogue...frequent italics have come to signal weak writing. (In other words, don't use italics.)


How do you set off your interior dialogue when you're writing with narrative intimacy?  (See answer on page 128)

(I failed to mention that this book is the 2nd Edition. I needed to clarify this so you understand the final paragraph.)
We have noticed since the first edition of this book came out that a lot of writers have taken our advice about showing and telling too much to heart. The result has sometimes been sterile writing, consisting mostly of bare-bones descriptions and skeletal dialogue. Yet fiction allow for marvelous richness and depth, and nowhere more so than through interior monologue. You have to be careful not to go overboard, but interior monologue gives you opportunity to invite your readers into your characters minds, sometimes with stunning effect.

*****

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Guilty! Guilty as charged. Don't look now but those are my hands in the guillotine (Please Ma, blindfold me first!). And they deserve their grim fate for the sins they have committed. After reading the next chapter in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, I am in abject despair. I have so much to correct in my writing. Time to get on it.

Chapter 6 - See How It Sounds

The problem with dialogue is, more often than not, with the dialogue itself rather than with the mechanics.

There are some mechanical techniques you can use when self editing that will cure one of the most common reason for flat dialogue: formality. (Buy the book to find out!)

The simplest  way to make your dialogue less formal is to use more contractions. (This one crucified me to the wall. When I wrote The Sin of Certainty. I was not even thinking about this. I just wrote. Then, one of my proofreaders (thanks Bob) pointed out to me that I NEVER used a contraction. Not in the dialogue, not in the narrative. I hadn't even thought of it, it never crossed my mind that I was writing so formally. It wasn't intentional but it was there. There is another technique mentioned but again, you have to get the book.)

Check to make sure you aren't trying to shoehorn information into the dialogue that doesn't belong there. (I like this. Dialogue is a great way to sneak in hints about a character's past or a setup for a future event, but only if that information is useful to the scene.)

You don't want your characters to speak more fully formed thoughts than they normally would, just so you can get in some information to your readers.

Weed out fancy polysyllabic words.(Guilty, at least at one time. A friend of mine once told me to dumb down my narrative, that I was using too many words that most readers will not be familiar with. My retort was that most people have already dumbed down their vocabulary and they should read the dictionary and not be so lazy. He was right, but I still think people are lazy and like water, they take path of least resistance when it comes to vocabulary. (Yes, I know 'dumbed' is not a word.))

Have your characters misunderstand one another once in a while. (This one gave me pause. I think I unwittingly attempted this with Rose and Mayor Brower in The Sin of Certainty. When I revisit that book, after I am finished blogging on this self editing theme, I am going to work on that relationship because Rose's misunderstanding of Mayor Brower's past is a key element and I think I can improve it. Okay, I know I can improve it.)

Good dialogue isn't an exact transcription of the way people talk but is more an artifice, a literary device that mimics real speech.

Bring your ear into play. (Buy the book. There is several pages about this concept and worth the cost of the book.)

(Okay, this next point is very challenging, to me at least, and I am as guilty as anyone. Because of this single point, I have much to do with my previous writing. I do not think that I have that much dialogue to correct but I know it is there. I took the lazy way out and didn't even know I was being lazy.)

(The section begins with a passage from Huckleberry Finn.) Beginning novelists, even today are often tempted to write dialect-whether it be southern black or Bronx Italian or Locust Valley lockjaw-using a lot of trick spellings and lexical gimmicks. It is the easy way out. (I discussed this with my wife. This is the very reason she stopped reading Huckleberry Finn. It was way too difficult to understand the dialogue.)

When you use an unusual spelling, you are bound to draw the reader's attention away from the dialogue and onto the means of getting it across.  (I think there is room, albeit extremely limited, for unusual spelling, but when it is as thick as Mark Twain's depiction of southern black speech, when it makes the reader stop and decipher what is being said, then it is too much.)

So how do you get a character's geographical or education or social background across? (For the answer, see page 110)

It takes courage to write like this, but it is worth the risk.

Explanations, -ly adverbs, oddball verbs of speech, trick spellings-these can't really help your dialogue. They take the place of good dialogue rather than help create it.  Accept no substitutes.

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About a month ago, I happened to find this article about writing blurbs, a skill that is completely foreign to me. If you scroll to the bottom, it appears to be a reprint from this website. But I was unable to find the exact article on the second website. Both websites are intriguing to me, with a lot of very useful information. I hope you find the as insightful as I.

There was a time, not to long ago either, that I thought I would never write a short story (and now I have two out), let alone a blurb. When I thought about it, I could not see myself creating something so short, so minute, so...tiny. Then I ran across this article and knowing I needed to update my blurbs, I concluded I needed master, or at least improve my that skill. Okay, I knew I needed to start over from the beginning.

I sat down one night and started playing. Surprisingly, I found it to be rather entertaining and enjoyable. The article breaks the process down into nine very basic and effective bullet points. I picked my latest short and decided to rework that blurb. I made the point of making sure, as best as I could, to include each of the nine points in it (Don't know if I succeeded or not but I do like what I came up with.

One bullet point is about hyperbole. I do not like hyperbole, I do not superlative's either. I prefer reality and not the kind cable television promotes as real. I don't like the Jerry Springer show either (Is it still on?) But that is just me and I accept and admit hyperbolic blurbs have their place; they are everywhere. That is what sells the product, that and sex. Lots of sex. Movie trailers are all hyperbole in my view. All the best parts, buffed up and polished to an extreme to catch the viewers attention. Think of Muhammad Ali and how he promoted himself. He was a master at self promotion and it was all hyperbole. I did not like him as a child because of the hype but now as an adult, he has my utmost respect. He knew what he was doing. A very intelligent man. But I digress...

I started messing around and about in about two minutes I had 7,863 hyperbolic words all charged with unbelievable plot twists, international intrigue and desperate unrequited lust (Don't stroke out, I trimmed the blurb down to a reasonable length). I found I was concentrating on every single word, searching for the best word to exaggerate the meaning as much as possible. And I was laughing my butt off. I think I am getting better. I don't know, really. But I do like the changes I made on my short stories. I still need to do one for my novel. The take away for all of this is the article from Publetariat is worth the bother to read.

Secondly, this last week a fellow author pointed me towards Malcolm Gladwell. Jay is one of those very intelligent authors, whose attention to detail is wonderful. I suspect that is why he is a mystery writer and I am not. His tome is not published yet, but from what he has told me of his plot, he has one hell of a idea. (Another great cover by Todd Hebertson. Take a good look at the macadam.)

The reason Gladwell came up in the conversation is Jay and I were discussing what it takes to 'master' the writing process.  In Gladwell's book, Outliers, he (Gladwell) states that it takes 10,000 hours to master a talent. You may have heard of the book before. I have added it to my ever growing reading list. I tried to figure out how many hours I have spent writing my stories, reading about writing, blogging (does that count?), practicing to improve my skill. I have no idea how many. Some days I think I am getting very close (So, I lie to myself a lot. Get over it. You do it too). Other days, I feel like I am not even 33% there. But that is not the point, at least I do not think Gladwell really meant 10,000 hours. I think he meant you are never there, but you should always strive to get there. Can you imagine how many hours in the ring Mohammad Ali spent? Way to many of us wannabes stop and give up long before we should and that separates those who master the skill and those who do not. And I am not talking about how much money an author makes either. I do believe that there are many excellent writers out there who have never discovered and never will be.

Thursday night I will be blogging on the next chapter of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. See you then.

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