A while back, I wrote a fun blog post called The Plural of Book is Not Book's, and since then, She Writes members from all over have been sending me their own grammar pet peeves. I love reading them because they prove I'm not alone in my quest to make the world a better place by eliminating one grammatical error at a time.

One of the most common messages I get is about the misuse of…

In last week’s post I explained what a book proposal is and what it should include. This week I asked my friend Diane O’Connell, a former editor at Random House who now has a consulting business to help aspiring authors get published, for the biggest and most common mistakes she sees in book proposals.

Here’s what she had to…

You may have heard the term "book proposal," but chances are you have no idea what one really includes. Don't worry, you're not alone!

If you're working on a non-fiction book and looking to get it traditionally published, you don't have to submit the entire finished product to pitch either a literary agent or an acquisitions editor at a publishing house. Instead, use a book proposal, which I like to think of as a business plan for your book. In other words, a book proposal should…

People often tell me they would love to write a book but have no idea how they would fill that many pages. "It just seems impossible!" they say. "How do you do it?" they ask.

"Baby steps," I tell them. "Baby steps."

Think of it this way: if you write just one page a day, in less than a year you'll have a book. One page a day! Anyone can do that.

When I'm working on a book, I like to give myself a goal of writing 1,000 words a day, Monday through Friday. To keep track, I…