• What to Know About Co-Authoring a Book

    There are steps you have to take when co-authoring that you wouldn’t typically think about if writing solo. Having a writing partner can be very beneficial when it comes to splitting the work and dividing tasks based on strengths and weaknesses. But there are also a handful of steps you should take when co-authoring a book that you wouldn’t typically have to think about if you wrote solo. Here are 10 tips about co-authoring a book: 1. Pick someone with a similar writing style and work ethic as yours. The best way to get your joint writing project off the…

  • What’s a Style Guide and Which One Should I Use?

    What are Style Guides? It can get downright confusing to remember all the writing rules set in place centuries ago. That’s where style guides come in handy; a style guide is a manual that details the standards for writing, designing, and publishing various publications. There are many types of industries publishing materials within their area of expertise. Style guides are specifically created to keep writers, editors, and designers on the same page when working on a project. In your high school and college English classes, you most likely used a style called MLA, or The Modern Language Association Handbook. If you’ve done…

  • How To Self-Edit Your Manuscript

    A common thought among first-time writers is that once they finish writing their book it’s ready to go straight to a professional editor. However, there are two crucial steps that need to take place before you ship your manuscript off for editing. The first is that you must do a few rounds of self-editing yourself. This is the time to read your book as if you’ve never seen it before. Look for plot issues and other trouble spots that could trip your readers up. Take the time to delete material that doesn’t need to stay, run spell check, look for…

  • Writing a Lot Versus Writing Well

    I think back to some college literature courses I took, and the required length of papers I had to turn in. It wasn’t uncommon to have to produce an eight-page essay, but hitting that page count was hard every single time. I found myself using filler words, expanding my sentences to take up more space. I traded direct and pointed sentences for ones that were way too long and wordy—and sometimes a little redundant. I think that focus to get as many words on paper sticks with us as writers, but it shouldn’t. In fact, when writing a book, the…