Four Ways to Make Your Writing Sound Prettier

Some writers write prose that sounds good. The writing makes you want to read it slow, as if you could let the words melt on your tongue. I once read some of Faulkner's Sartoris out loud to Liz. Faulkner is known for his long, convoluted sentences and huge jumps in...

Roz Morris on Why Writers Should Read

Why do authors read? We all know why we should read more: to learn the rules, to understand the language better, to figure out which stories work and which don’t. But I wanted to get deeper than shoulds. Why do experienced, published authors actually read? Roz is about as experienced a novelist, not to mention blogger, as they come, so I hope this gives you an insight into a real author’s reading life, and how to improve your own.

There Will Always Be Too Much Work To Do

This week, I began my new editing job by getting into a novel on track to be published in 2012. To prepare, I read three novels, two of which were by other authors in the same genre to get a sense of the “rules” of the genre. The other was the first book...

Hide Away Your Writing

Happy Saturday, writing friends. As you know, on Saturday I have only one rule: do the opposite of something we did during the week. The reasoning behind this is simple. If you occasionally break the guidelines you set for yourself, your writing will never get stale,...