(The Subversive Copy Editor)
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Thank you for your interest in The Subversive Copy Editor and Writer, Editor, Helper! Now that I’m fully immersed in writing and publishing novels for children, my blog and newsletter have ended. The entire archive remains available here. Check the…
In the writers’ groups where I hang out online, these queries are evergreen: How do I know if I need a copyeditor before I submit my work to an agent or editor? How do I find a good copyeditor? How much…
Earlier this year, Fiction+ considered whether a novel should have a table of contents. Although it might seem to be a matter of personal preference, there are strong practical reasons for including or not including a TOC, depending on a…
First-time novelists often struggle with dividing their work into chapters. A sample from my Facebook feed: “How long should a chapter be?”“Is it okay to have this one randomly short chapter?”“Is there a standard for how long a chapter should…
Almost every writer I know has a love-hate relationship with their writing program, whether it’s Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, or a yellow legal pad. It’s clear there’s no single perfect choice for drafting, editing, and formatting your work for…
Creative writers sometimes mangle grammar on purpose or get creative with punctuation. At the drafting stage, we keep a dictionary and style manual at hand. When slips are unintended, we count on our copyeditors to catch them. But at some…
Agents and editors want what they want. In an initial query letter, they always want to know your manuscript’s total word count. But if they respond by asking you to submit a full or partial manuscript, they ask for pages, not words.
So how do you know whether your pages equal their pages?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the great time I had brainstorming about blogging with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle at their joyful Editing Podcast. Parts 2 and 3 are now available. In part 1 (26:23 min) we discussed …
Yesterday I had a wonderful time brainstorming about blogging with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle at their joyful Editing Podcast. In fact, we dug into so many aspects of blogging, they decided to break the chat into 3 parts. In…
Jack Hart has spent five decades helping writers succeed, working shoulder-to-shoulder with journalists in newsrooms both big and small and with students at five universities. Writers who’ve worked with him have written national best sellers and won prizes that include five…