What separates the Amateurs from the Professionals? The ability to both Edit and Proofread. In novel writing, editing is King and proofreading is Queen.

By Sharla Rae Too much flab on a person can cause a fatal heart attack. It's fatal to an author’s writing too. Flabby writing is usually the result of wordiness or over writing. Both are weak and tiresome and make editors go cross-eyed. Worse, at the first sign of it, an editor stamps it as a reject. […]

by Sharla Rae Hey, who’s telling this story? I can make my characters do or say anything I want them to. Many beginning writers subscribe to this theory. I hate to break anyone’s bubble but that’s hogwash. When introducing characters, the author breathes life into them with a physical description, personality, goals and motivations. They look, […]

  By Laura Drake Have you ever heard this Indian Parable?  Six blind men try to determine what an elephant looks like by feeling different parts of its body. The one at the tail says an elephant is like a rope; the one at a leg says it’s like a pipe, the one at the […]

By Sharla Rae I preach Like With Like to my critique partners all the time and once in a while, they remind me to practice what I preach. So what do I mean by like with like? It’s not as easy to explain on paper as it is to point out the mistake in a […]