Just spent multiple happy hours working on a friend’s book proposal. Doing work for friends can be tricky, mostly because if you feel nothing for the material or the approach, you know you can’t do it justice as an editor/consultant. And how can you say, “Well, sorry, but what you’ve been working on and agonizing [...]

That has to be the best email subject line I’ve seen in ages. Sounds almost like a Zen koan, doesn’t it?
The email came from writer and friend Elizabeth Clarke. She went on to explain, “I got a puppy…” and it seems the lively little guy is getting in the way of her good intentions to [...]

I had a great conversation with a book design expert last week. Nick Zelinger has designed covers and interiors for many, many books over the last 20 years, most of them for authors who self-publish. I asked him for some tips about how my clients and I could prepare our manuscript files to prevent hang-ups [...]

Over the past year, many of you have been following my news about my client and friend Marc Warnke, who has had the vision and commitment to make the journey from hatching an idea, to creating a manuscript, to becoming a published author. The journey reaches its culmination today, folks – the book is now [...]

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “ghostwriting?” I recently had a great conversation with social media maven Jen Harris on the subject that really got me thinking about it.
People outside the world of creating, writing, editing and publishing books tend to think of it as something clandestine and maybe less-than-ethical.  They [...]

I’m helping my friend Karla practice using words. We’re working from the sheet music for “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and the page is heavily marked up. Articles and little prepositions are circled, so that they won’t get left out. Sometimes we have to stop to go over words with diphthongs or extra syllables. The word [...]

I got to hear Greg Mortensen speak at the Morrison Center last night. One of the many amazing stories from his amazing journey was about the struggle with his publishers at Penguin over the exact wording of the subtitle for his book, Three Cups of Tea.
The publishers insisted on “One man’s mission to fight terrorism [...]

I’m finally reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. For somebody who makes her living keeping sentences short and cutting out the big words, this is a real feast. His writing is graceful, eloquent, full of meaning and literary allusions, and full of words that send me to the dictionary. With long, loping, looping sentences.
I’m [...]

Nothing makes an English major’s day like seeing the word “grammar” in a news headline. Apparently, the lack of a gender-neutral plural pronoun in the English language is causing confusion on social networking sites: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080627/ap_on_hi_te/tec_facebook_genders
All writers struggle with this one. For example, take a sentence like “Every writer has ______ own unique style.”
Should one use [...]

I’ve been working on new content for Dr. Jennifer Anacker’s website this week and needed to learn more about chiropractic treatment and subluxation so I could describe them briefly and clearly for her readers. That meant starting with research and taking lots of notes. And thanks to a lucky accident — running out of graph [...]