• 7 Fiber-Rich Ideas for Solving Writer’s Block

    Close your laptop. Wait…not yet, read this first. After you close your laptop, pick up a pen and a little notebook – the tiny kind you always got in your Christmas stocking because they were four for a dollar and came in different colors and your mom thought they were “so cute.” (You should be able to find one in that box under your bed where you threw all the gifts from your Christmas stocking that weren’t edible.) Head out to a place you’ve never been – a new coffee shop, a park bench, a bus station – anywhere you might find at least one other person. Now, make up…

  • 10 Stages of Grief: The Editor’s Note Edition

    So let’s say you’ve made it through the first hoops and now your Amazing and Brilliant First Novel is sitting on the desk of a Real Life Editor at a Real Live Publishing House. Your contract has been framed and placed on the fireplace mantle between your dusty wedding photo and dustier 5th Grade Spelling Bee Champion trophy. You’ve spent the first part of your advance on the clothes you just have to have for that inevitable booksigning at the Barnes & Noble in Lincoln, Nebraska. And you’ve ordered business cards that list your occupation as “Author” to replace the ones that said “Writer.” Then you get the email. The…

  • Chasing the Flame

    Note: I am a writer as well as an editor. Sometimes I wear my writer’s hat when blogging. This is one of those times. When the source of his fiction was autobiographical, Eddie could write with authority and authenticity. But when tried to imagine – to invent, to create – he simply could not succeed as well as when he remembered. This is a serious limitation for a fiction writer… But Eddie would make a living as a novelist, nonetheless. One can’t deny him his existence as a writer simply because he would never be, as Chesterton once wrote of Dickens, “a naked flame of mere genius, breaking out in…

  • 7 Things that Keep Editors in Business

    A long time ago, in a life far, far away, I worked as an assistant manager of a Pizza Hut. The owner of this particular store (a former Pizza Hut corporate big-wig) had hired a man we’ll call “Gary” (since that was his name) to globally manage the stores. Since each store already had its own manager and more than a few assistant managers, I wondered what Gary’s responsibilities entailed. I found out one Friday in the middle of the lunch rush hour. He entered the restaurant as any other customer, waited to be seated, then proceeded to order enough food for a family of six. Since this was my…