The Paragraph

The paragraph is a basic building block of writing, for both fiction and non-fiction. Paragraphs are the vehicles that writers use to put together a story-line or provide chunks of information. Share This:

Those Darn Writing Rules

You’ve heard the “rules”: 1) Start sentences with capital letters. 2) Never start a sentence with a conjunction. 3) End sentences with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. 4) Never end a sentence with a preposition, etc. But some of these rules aren’t actual writing rules? For some reason, someone made up several of

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Hook Your Reader

A hook is a grabber or attention-getter that cause a reader to stay with your writing instead of doing something else. It’s compelling enough that your work will take over a reader’s time. Share This:

Style Sheets

If you’re new to writing, and don’t know about or haven’t used style sheets, it’s time you learned. They’re really helpful as you write or edit. Share This:

Use Writing Time Wisely

Are you able to write eight hours a day and do research for another two hours, write a blog post, still get to the kids’ after-school activities, work in the garden, have dinner with your family, and get six to eight hours of sleep? If not, here are some thoughts on time management for writers.

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Combine skill with passion

Editors put a lot of pressure on writers to get it right. They instruct on grammar and choosing the right words. They point out what doesn’t work and what might work better, and they share what writers should do to create a book that the author will be proud of. But is that all there

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Why an editor might decline a manuscript

Why would an editor turn down an editing project? Obviously, there’s the excitement of a new project, the income, and a new client that the editor might work with for several other projects. But many editors have another motivation: to work with a writer to make a manuscript the best it can be, and to

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