I spent several hours today perusing the essays and banger posts of a fresh, bright voice on the Internet: Liza Libes, an iconoclastic novelist who describes herself as “rebuilding literary taste one book at a time.” She writes on X, Instagram, and her website about “literature, beauty, art, culture, and big ideas.” Discovering her was like taking a bath in sunlight.
Read MoreWrong Word Placement: Your Manuscript’s Hidden Flaw?
Wrong word placement is one of the mistakes I find most often in my business of editing books. Authors, is this your manuscript’s hidden flaw? Take a look at these two sentences, and see if you can identify the problem: The tree proved an irresistible temptation to the birds, hung with ripe cherries. The delighted nursing home residents sang along ... Read More
Should You Rewrite Your Novel or Memoir as a Screenplay?
If you’ve been shopping your book to literary agents and have had no luck courting their interest, you may have heard you should rewrite your novel or memoir as a screenplay. Guess what? Screenwriters who’ve had no luck with their scripts are being told the reverse: that they should rewrite their screenplay as a novel. I have a foot in ... Read More
Two Great Memoirs–Check These Out
Let me tell you what I’m excited about at the moment: two memoirs I recently edited, which are two of the best manuscripts to come across my desk in a long time. “Diamond” is such a page-turner that I’ve passed it on to the producer I work with. That’s one of the perks I can offer my clients–exposure of their novel or memoir to a New York film producer if I think it checks all the boxes for a great movie.
Read MorePresent Tense or Past Tense? First Person or Third? Which to Use for Your Novel or Memoir
You’re getting ready to write your novel or memoir. How do you decide which tense you should use: past or present? In the case of a novel, you also need to decide whether to write in first person or third. These are common dilemmas and ones worth exploring, because selecting the right tense and point of view from the start will save you getting stuck part-way into the writing, unable to make that choice work for the remainder of your story.
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