• That’s a Lot of Words

    I’ve been editing for more than thirty years. Not the same book, mind you. That would be insane. When I was organizing a shelf yesterday (as one does when procrastinating), I decided to line up some of the books I’ve worked on. The picture here shows what I found. I don’t have much space for books in my small apartment, and I only have a tiny percentage of the printed versions of books I’ve worked on, so this is just drop in the proverbial bucket. In the interest of full transparency, there is one book here I didn’t edit (Demon, by Tosca Lee), but since I worked on all of…

  • Nothing New Under the Sun

    I used to be quite prolific in this space. I know that’s difficult to believe as you scroll down to find the most recent post is from February and the one before that is almost a year older and neither of them has a clever title like, “How to Write When You’ve Forgotten What Words Are,” or “How Can I Possibly Finish This Book When My Protagonist Is Smarter Than I Am?”, or “Six Places in Your House (Besides Under Your Desk) Where You Can Hide From Your Novel.” It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about the writing life. (I have plenty.) It’s just that I don’t…

  • Something New, Soon. Meanwhile…

    I’m working on developing a new service for all you writerly folks. My current editorial services are for novels that you’ve revised so many times words suddenly have no meaning and all those little letters on the page might as well be cookie crumbs or ants angling for cookie crumbs. (Note to self: Clean your screen, Stephen. I mean, seriously.) The new service will be for projects that are still in their infancy. Those clever nuggets you’ve been collecting in a dozen computer folders (that have names like “new story idea” or “another new story idea” or “an even different new story idea”) as well as the Next Big Thing…

  • The First Book

    Congratulations. You’ve written a novel. Your first. It’s no longer a thing “you’d like to do someday,” it’s a thing you did. The End. You just wrote that, and it made you smile. Family members barely recognize you. Where’s the sullen, contentious, lost, confused, un-showered, frustrated writer-wannabe they’d come to expect every time you crawled out of your writing cave into the real world to briefly consider eating food that doesn’t come out of a plastic bag? She’s gone. That was the exhausted, mud-caked, sweaty Basic Training writer; the “I’m going to finish this thing if it kills me” writer. You’re not her anymore. You’re a Bonafide Author now. And guess what? Your book, this very first novel…

  • #amwaiting

    When the language gods sat down at their very expensive polished maple conference table to decide which term to use for the art of putting words together to tell stories, “writing” wasn’t their first choice. “Bloodletting” actually had the most up-votes and was likely to get the nod. But then one of the lesser gods – the one everyone mistakenly called Vern – felt compelled to mention how similar “writing” was to “waiting,” which they’d already determined would mean “excruciatingly long pauses where nothing appeared to be happening.” While he was publically showing his support for the already-popular idea of eliminating “writing” from contention, he was secretly hoping his observation might be clever…

  • How to Write a Novel

    You’re going to need an idea. It can be a clever plot. Something about uncontrollable magic or unpredictable mayhem or unconventional love. Or maybe your idea is a character. Someone who stands out. Someone who blends in. Someone who lives in a coffee house attic. Someone whose feet never touch the ground. Okay, now the hardest part: You must write a sentence. Any sentence will do (yes, even a sentence fragment) because you’ll probably change it a hundred times anyway. Here, I wrote some for you: The monkey never saw it coming. Halfway between the sky and the sidewalk, she realized she had forgotten how to fly. His favorite sound and his favorite activity were defined by the same two…

  • The Fault in Our Stares

    If Neil Gaiman walked into this coffee shop, I’d be starstruck. I’m not easily starstruck. As I slog through the latter part of middle age, I just don’t have the energy to drum up enthusiasm for the common celebrity. Confession: I haven’t read Entertainment Weekly in years. Last summer I visited the set of the new Zach Braff movie (coming to theaters near you this July – and depending on the edit, starring me in one scene as a blurry background extra) and was non-plussed by the famously tanned faces that wandered in and out of the virtual frame. My favorite part of the visit was talking briefly with Zach’s much less famous brother, Adam,…