My writer friend, VR Barkowski, gave me permission to repost one of her blogs because I thought it bore repeating. VR’s debut novel is A Twist of Hate and can be found on Amazon. Check it out. A is for Anne Lamott. Who, in Bird by Bird , reminds us of the importance of shitty first drafts. B is for blogging. After all, isn't that what the A to Z is all about? C is for critiques. Be gracious, be kind, be honest, be open-minded—both when giving and receiving. D is for drafts. First drafts receive the lion's share of attention, but a first draft is only the clay. It is the innumerable subsequent drafts which will mold that clay into something extraordinary. E is for editing. Approach this task without mercy. (Unless you're writing about a character named Mercy, as I am.) F is for formula. The kryptonite of the creative mind. Avoid whenever possible. G is for grammar. One of the required tools of the writing trade. Get up close and personal. You can't do th...

Image by Artur Bergman , via Flickr Before I talk about specifics, let me mention that this particular book I’m talking about was written ten years ago. Resurrecting an old manuscript has its own set of problems, but those tend to be technology and history. Oh, and let’s not forget the quality of writing. The operation I needed to perform was much more complicated. I’ve written all my books in third person point of view, but toward the middle of my current work in progress, my critique partner kept telling me that my heroine was standing on the sidelines, without much emotion. A cardboard character. No matter what I did, I got the same response from her with each page swap. I always have multiple POVs―four in this book―which is the reason first person never worked for me, except for two short stories I wrote for different anthologies. Was writing this one character in first person the solution to my problem? What about the other three POVs? Before I tested the POV switch, I c...

Image by Henry Söderlund , via Flickr I’m at the stage of editing my book where I’m starting to suspect I’ve been molly-coddling a darling or two. “But,” I wondered, “how does one tell?” Kill Your Darlings was a slogan of the Blood-Red Pencil for some time, so I thought I would ask my fine colleagues the following questions: 1. How do you determine what might be a “darling” - either in your own work or a client’s work? What clues do you pick up? 2. What differentiates a “darling” from a valuable plot thread? 3. Are darlings always evil? Do they destroy a book if they are allowed to live? 4. Have you ever killed a darling and then regretted it? 5. Have you ever relocated a darling to another book where it forms a genuine piece of the plot? Linda Lane When I wrote my first book, I finished with 20,000 words too many in the inflated first draft. Some of the descriptive passages were so near and dear to my heart. Bottom line: lovely as I thought they were, they didn’t move ...

A very long time ago, around 40 BCE or so, the Roman poet Horace wrote this in his Ars Poetica: “Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches.” It has been said that from this sentence by Horace comes the phrase “purple prose.” I used this phrase in a speech I gave a few months ago, and was surprised when many in my audience did not know what I meant. This may be because they were would-be authors, not editors. Editors are on the lookout for purple prose – so they can kill it. Purple prose means a word, phrase, sentence, or any written passage that is too ornate, too flowery, too over-the-top – in fact, too anything. Purple prose draws attention to itself and away from the story. The most obvious kind of purple prose is romantic or erotic prose. It’s the easiest place to go over the top. Perhaps because the words we give to sexuality are usually either too clinical or too crude. If you say “He patted her mammary glands” it’s not very exciting, but “He grab...