Editing angles to improve your writing by Barbara McNichol, nonfiction book editor with offices in Colorado and Arizona
From the category archives:
by Barbara McNichol I have been creating an evergrowing list of common one-word vs. two-word confusions as part of my Word Trippers. I started a list that has now grown and migrated to a page of its own. See One or Two? for the latest. And return often, as I’m regularly adding more! I appreciate your comments [...]
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(Editor’s note: Last week, Jerry gave advice on being gentle when editing others’ writing but ruthless when editing your own. In this article, he provides specific ways of doing exactly that.) By Jerry Brown, APR (used by permission) Edit, edit, edit. Then edit some more. Be ruthless when editing your own copy. Don’t fall in [...]
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Editor’s Note: This post by my client Nancy Juetten (author of Bye Bye Boring Bio) sparks reflection beyond the scope of this blog but I share it with you because it packs a lot of value. In response, please comment on this piece and share your own lessons, your deepest hopes, and your biggest dreams for 2012. [...]
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by Barbara McNichol What can editors tell writers about improving their writing before they even begin the editing process? I shared my ideas and examples on a recent teleclass hosted by Janice Campbell of NAIWE. You can listen to the full hour of “fixes” I presented by dialing dial 1-218-844-3182 and enter Recording ID: 90075555 [...]
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by Barbara McNichol Let me shake this writing “pet peeve” off my pen. It perplexes me why writers overuse the words “start” and “begin.” In a 5,000-word document I recently edited, those two words appeared 14 times while only 5 were deemed necessary. Don’t “start” to do something; just do it! The following examples show [...]
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by Dawn Goldberg, Write Well U (reprinted with permission from Fuel) Writing is more than just packaging your words. Those words are the meat of your project and your message. You have to think about content and your audience and writing it well and getting your readers’ attention and keeping your readers’ attention and…. The [...]
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by Barbara McNichol According to Writer’s Almanac, in 1946, George Orwell (famed author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four) wrote an essay called “Politics and the English Language.” In it, he included five rules for effective written communication. I share these five rules here with my own commentary in red. For the life of me, though, [...]
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Barbara McNichol Writers take their observations of the world, draw a few conclusions, and translate them into messages on paper (or computer screens). When you write something to market your products or services, you don a writer’s hat to express your message in words. But don’t stop there. You then need to put on your editor’s [...]
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by Dawn Goldberg (used with permission) No matter how much we want and love to write, unless we’re terribly disciplined or have deadlines (or an editor/agent looming over us), our default activity is not writing. In other words, if we have a spare minute, a break between activities, the rare gift of an unplanned hour, [...]
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by Barbara McNichol As a speaker or author at anystage of creating your book, you already know that having a quality bio is essential to opening the right doors to new opportunities. To help you attract money, clients, and media attention, I invite you to invest an hour listening to an excellent audio interview [...]
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