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The Editing Hour: The Semicolon

I love semicolons, when they’re used correctly. There are several ways to connect two independent clauses (ie complete sentences): using a coordinating conjunction or FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), using a period and a capital, or using a semicolon. When using a semicolon, make sure the two sentences are closely related. They […]

Balance

I wanted to take a minute to talk about balance. After reading the Huffington Post article about how most women are sleep deprived, it occurred to me that I’m not the only one working myself to the bone. Most women, especially if they have kids, are trying to “do it all”—be great wives, mothers, daughters, […]

Link Love

A little late on the link love this week again, but I’m feeling more sane now that the holidays are over. Good stuff this week:

In publishing news, things may not be as bad as they seem: Jacket Copy reported that book sales were down only 3% in 2009, with hardcover fiction up 3% from […]

Writing residencies and conferences

While I’ve attended a couple writing conferences, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, my friend Christine over at 80,000 words is much more experienced in this department and has offered to write a guest post about writing residencies and conferences. Enjoy!

Finding space (psychic and physical) and […]

San Francisco Writers’ Grotto Pre-Holiday Mini Tour

I’m having technical difficulties with iMovie, so please excuse the weird double audio clips in this video. And while I’m trying to figure out how that happened, enjoy a mini tour of the Grotto, a co-op of full-time writers who share an office space near South Park in San Francisco.

San Francisco Writers’ Grotto […]

The Big Five

You’ve written your book, you’ve revised it, you’ve had it edited, you’ve queried agents and while waiting for responses you decide to research who’s who in the publishing industry. Soon, of course, you realize that all the big publishing houses are owned by international media conglomerates, which may explain why they’re more interested in the […]

Author Interview: Jacquelyn Wheeler

Jacquelyn Wheeler is the author of Rising Shadow, a YA sci-fi novel.

How long did it take you to write Rising Shadow?

It took me about nine weeks to write the first draft and then about nine months to edit it, although during that time I was also working on books two and […]

Self-Publishing

There’s been a lot of talk on blogs lately about the pros and cons of self-publishing. Until now, self-publishing has been synonymous with vanity publishing, the idea being that there are no gate-keepers to self-publishing. All you need is some money and you can publish a book, no matter how crappy it is. Today, as […]

For Fun: An Editing Quiz

I’ve been home with a cold the past couple of days, so here’s a fun editing quiz from the Times until I return tomorrow.

The Editing Hour: The Comma

When I’m editing, one of the most common mistakes I see is the absence or misplacement of the comma. People, put commas, in places they don’t belong and they leave commas out of places they do belong. There ARE rules for when, and when not, to use commas. Here they are:

When to use a […]