Think you don't have the time to re-read, even the best novels?

If you're a writer, you'd better think again. Those novels are your education.

4 Advantages of Re-Reading.

Over on her blog, Wordplay, K.M. Weiland is running a free ebook giveaway of my book,  The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner's Manual.

If you'd like to win a free copy,…

And for the grand finale of our April series of weekly editor chats, Roz Morris of Nail Your Novel and I are talking about revision---when it starts, what it involves, how to do it, what to expect. What this elusive and often-misunderstood word 'revision' really means:

Please join us for:…

"Show, don't tell."

Okay.

How?

Fabulous #editingchat today, in which we demonstrated Developmental Editing from a single sentence.

"The writing's not important." Have you ever heard someone say that? Someone with a writing blog, someone styling themself a guru of the writing industry. . .someone who should know better?

I have. It's BULL. If the writing weren't important, hey, you wouldn't want to be a writer, now, would you?

So today Roz Morris & I are holding our third weekly editorial chat, this time all about that all-important writing:…

And so we come to the final of these four Frequently Asked Questions:

4. What’s the inside scoop on the state of publishing these days i.e. POD, ebooks, self-publishing, multimedia, et cetera? I mean, what’s really going on out there?

So, for the last two Fridays I've been doing an #editingchat on Twitter to give aspiring writers a chance to ask questions about editing and the current publishing industry. But I forgot to tell you guys about. I'm sorry. I'm not terribly well-organized.

But I did archive them. Hurrah! I'm a little better-organized after-the-fact.

Please feel free to peruse:

 …

Roz Morris and I are back, this week. . .

Talking Character

What exactly is Line Editing? Why do you see advice out there in the blogosphere saying, "You don't need Line Editing," even while I'm saying, "You sure as heck do"?

And where do I get my authority on the subject?

Editor Roz Morris of Nail Your Novel and I have been talking shop so much lately we've decided to post our conversations on my blog weekly throughout the month of April, covering the basics of writing: plot, character, prose.

And, as happened with our earlier conversations, it's gotten a bit out of hand.

Join us this week to discuss structure, temporal-vs-event design, the biggest problems we see in client manuscripts, what…

And. . .the prize for first Amazon review goes to M. Terry Green of Southern California! I'm giving her one of Eddie Izzard's high heels and a bottle of archaeology beer.

How do you tell which independent editors and which aren't?

Go to the horse's mouth.

Therese Walsh, author of The Last Will of Moira Leahy and co-founded of uber-blog for writers Writer Unboxed, is guest posting for me on what it's like to get that book deal, get published by a major publisher (Random House), and have a second book already contracted for.

Is it all fun and games?

Not necessarily.

Does she know what to do about that?

Yes, she does. And she teaches us the way all good…

I had 17, but I trimmed them down to just 4 and am answering them one at a time.

This week: 1. An agent told me to a) force my story into a pre-set length, b) force my story into a pre-defined genre, and/or c) “dumb down” my story. What’s going on? Can’t I just write the best book I have in me?

Not just for fiction writers anymore:

Storytelling for Business Bloggers

Judy Dunn, another of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers, spends her day blogging about self-promotion for writers on her popular CatsEyeWriter blog.

So guess what she's done for her guest post for me? Condensed her knowledge down to 10 succinct pointers.

That's some pretty succinct knowledge!

Join us:…

It's Monday, which means all I can see is the mountain of work I need to get done today before I launch into the whole mountain chain of work lying in wait for the rest of my week.

You know what this reminds me of? Yep. That phase of writing when you look back on your magnum opus and realize. . .you're going to have to do it all over again.

5 Pickles to…

I was offline all last week, accompanying my husband on a work retreat at a resort up on the spectacular Columbia River Gorge. It was a chance to unplug from the blogosphere, turn off work, and spend some time just hanging with my son, who is zipping into adolescence these days like he's on rocket-boosters.

When I got back, I was thinking a lot about what home means to me---even compared to a cushy vacation in a gorgeous place. And what that has to do with why I…