COVID-19, also known as SARS-CoV-2, as seen through an electron microscope. Image provided by The National Institutes of Health. Now that we're all several months into this pandemic, each of us has settled into something of a routine that may or may not be productive. I confess my first response was to turn into a human slug, sitting in my chair for countless hours with my computer on my lap, staring into space, or working endless rounds of crossword puzzles or games of Sudoku. I suddenly realized a few days ago I was in a sort of semi-coma and wondered if my epitaph would read, "She played a lot of Sudoku." I didn't want that to be my epitaph. I tried focusing on my garden but we're suffering from a plague of slugs this year and it is really one disgusting mess. This time last year, I was eating fresh organic food straight from my garden every single day. This year, the slugs are eating fresh organic food straight from my garden every single night....

If a writer who looked like this was living in my house, all the writing hacks in the world couldn't save me. There's something I inherently dislike about the word "hack". Perhaps it's because I'm a journalist and it's used pejoratively (and often unfairly) against reporters whose work people don't embrace. Maybe it's because I love horses and in the past, hack horses were frequently beaten and abused beasts of burden forced to draw heavy wagons. Whether it's someone trying to break into your computer, make you angry, or chop you to pieces, the word "hack" has few good meanings. However, in modern parlance hack has come to mean "a quicker and easier way of doing things." While I still have my nose up in the air a bit over this (I'm a perfectionist who doesn't mind doing things the un-hacked way...) I know this new sense of the word is here to stay. That said, I want to share some creative hacks for writers ...

The Eagle and Child, the pub in Oxford where The Inklings met every Tuesday while Oxford University was in session for more than 16 years. Both C. S Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were members of this famous writing critique group, which focused exclusively on works of fantasy. My fellow Blood-Red Pencil blogger, Patricia Stoltey, wrote a wonderful post this month about her own Best Ever Critique group. Be sure to read Patricia's wonderful post here . While I had already started a post on the same topic, after reading Patricia's entertaining and inspiring story, I switched gears a bit and decided to explore the history of a couple of notably successful writers' critique groups. Throughout recorded history, some of our most beloved authors have belonged to a writing and critique group or had a personal critique partner whose opinion they valued and trusted. While not every writing group produces a literary genius and not every critique duo helps each other achieve publ...

The plaque at the former Nicholson's Cafe in Edinburgh, Scotland, where, in 1993,  J. K. Rowling wrote much of her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in longhand on paper tablets. If you're going to make 2020 your best writing year ever, first there's something you'll have to do. You'll have to overcome all those excuses you come up with every year to explain why you're not writing. Every writer knows the drill. You've got the perfect writing day planned—snack stash full, hubby on a weekend fishing trip with his Dad and brother, children on an overnight playdate with their cousins. You're going to make that deadline, or you're going to start your novel or at least get a couple of thousand words written. You're going to make forward progress. And then the cat throws up on your grandmother's Oriental rug, the kid across the street hits a home run that comes sailing through one of your windows, a closed window of...

Patricia B. Smith joined the Blood-Red Pencil in 2018. Pat is a journalist and experienced professional developmental editor, working both for a publishing company and for private clients, as well as running her own publishing company. Pat's latest releases A practical, real world look at the process of buying, renovating, and reselling houses, presenting the risks and rewards of flipping real estate. This book will help readers determine if they have the necessary time and cash, and guide them through the process. Romantic short stories by 12 different authors, edited by Pat and published as an anthology by her company, Welkin Press. Spine-tingling short stories by 12 award-winning authors, edited by Pat. Pat's top articles on the Blood-Red Pencil Cats and Cozy Mysteries Go Together Like Scones and Clotted Cream How to Tell Good Editing from Bad Editing Is Editing a Dying Art? Killer Companions How NOT to Sell a Book Connect with Pat on Facebook, ...

We like to call people who flaunt fear and defy death daredevils, like those old barnstormers who flew their rickety biplanes upside down to the delight of the crowds below. But how can what writers do be compared to that? For me, it's not too far a stretch to think of writers as daredevils. I would argue that for many writers, even established ones, fear is the emotion most readily associated with our work. To get anything meaningful accomplished, we have to dig deep, don our daredevil armor and vanquish fear, much as the haints that terrorize us on All Hallow's Eve are conquered by the rising of the Saints on November 1st. Talk with any group of writers and you’ll find they fear the same things... that somehow their work won't be good enough or will never cross the finish line. Or if they do manage to get something written, edited and submitted to a publisher, it will never be bought. Or if their work is miraculously bought, once published, no reader will buy it....

One of the aphorisms we hear most frequently is that humor is subjective. All comedians know this. A comic can kill an audience with laughter on a Thursday night and put another audience into a coma with the exact same jokes on a Friday night. Who can say why? Great humor allows us to recognize and laugh at ourselves…at our foibles, our prejudices, our unsustainable beliefs, even at our goals and aspirations. But it is difficult to find truly funny works of fiction that can resonate with universal audiences. I often think of Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, one of my all-time favorite books. Most authors can only dream of achieving the success Amis had with his first novel, which won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for Fiction. I read it in high school, 12 years or so after its 1954 publication. I still have that first U. S. edition and keep it where I can see it just by lifting my head from my keyboard. That simple act makes me smile, because seeing Lucky Jim on the book’s tatter...

This post contains affiliate links for  Grammarly  in case you want to try it out yourself. As American schools have done a poorer and poorer job of educating students about the finer points of speaking, reading and writing the English language properly, correct grammar and spelling have gone the way of the dinosaurs. It’s relatively rare to meet a member of one of the younger generations who feels any assurance in their mastery of basic English. Of course, texting comes in for its share of the blame as well. If you can convey your meaning by typing the single character, “U,” why waste the time or energy required to tap out “you” on the tiny keys of your cell phone? However, what is tolerated or even welcomed in the world of texts, live chats, and gaming is still not acceptable in the hallowed halls of advanced academia. If you want to earn a college degree or have a prayer of achieving a Master’s or a Ph.D., you need to get your grammar and spelling on point. But is it...

I’ll start with a confession. I neither like nor enjoy most modern “literary” fiction. I’ve tried repeatedly to get involved with some Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award winner, only to throw it down with a combination of disgust and boredom within a few chapters. Not every single fictional character or family must suffer from such extreme dysfunction that they can barely make it through a day without booze or pills. A book needn’t feature only repellent people who have overpowering murderous urges toward their closest friends or family members in order to qualify as “literary.” But apparently, the gods of modern literature have dictated it must be thus, so bookstore shelves sag with a ponderance of these bleak modern novels. I’m not saying every book I read must be a variation on Pollyanna…simply that once in a while, I’d like to read a story of struggle, hope, ambition, and obstacles overcome that actually has a happy ending. Why can’t books about joy be considered as wort...

As an editor, I occasionally run across writers who are not nice people. They're angry, difficult to work with, believe their words are chiseled in stone on the tablet Moses carried down from Mount Sinai, and worst of all, they're condescending and think they know better than everyone about everything. Despite all these charming qualities, a few of them do manage to get published eventually, but their writing careers are often short-lived. When I had just started editing for a major genre publishing house, an acquisitions editor sent me a manuscript. Normally a lovely person, on this occasion she was edgy and irritable. She wanted a fast read and I gave her one. The author had a long publishing history and won a couple of awards, but she regarded him warily. I soon discovered why. He had an ugly temper and didn’t have much use for women. Apparently, this guy also didn't know how to write, so how had he been published so often? The book I read was not only shot throu...

I enjoy reading romance novels, particularly those set in the Regency era. I got to thinking about why this is so and realized it was because of the societal norms portrayed in the stories. Yes, they're fantasies about what it would be like to be a Lady hotly pursued by a rakish Duke, or even an Earl, and finally be the one who tames his wild heart. But for me, it's more than that. In Regency romances, men treat women like ladies, and I find such courtesies sorely lacking in modern life. I was raised in the 50s when men still held doors for women, so a desire for those small bits of what I consider to be masculine grace is woven into my DNA. At that point in history, members of the male sex were not as yet fearful of excoriation from some nascent feminist more determined to stake out her own boundaries than to be grateful for a simple act of courtesy. Now when I reach a door at the same time as a man, I see the poor thing looking at me with terror-stricken eyes and f...

Over the years I have worked as an editor, I’ve encountered many authors reluctant to hire or work with editors because they've previously suffered truly awful ordeals during the editing process. As a writer, I survived a few of those myself, so I know firsthand how upsetting a bad edit can be. Bad editors create new problems in manuscripts and often do nothing to resolve existing issues that beg for improvement. I am often asked how authors can tell a good editor from a bad editor. While there’s no guaranteed way to do this, I can offer a few suggestions that might help authors find an editor who will not only do a great job but will also be a good fit for their personality and writing style. Keep in mind I am speaking of developmental editing in this column, not just a copyedit that corrects typos and grammatical errors. Look for an editor who offers to edit your first ten pages free of charge Almost every confident professional developmental editor is more than ...

Photo of Eduardo Paolozzi mosaic inside Tottenham Court road tube station by Mark Hillary , via Flickr Like many people with creative tendencies, I wear more than one “artistic” hat. I not only love to read, write and edit, but I also dabble in art, photography, poetry, bead-making and a form of mosaic known as pique assiette that uses pieces of broken crockery in place of colored glass. You might be asking yourself what does any of this have to do with a blog about writing and editing? Quite a lot, in fact. My artistic ramblings led me to the world of t-shirt design and I was pleased to discover it was a lot of fun and brought in a few extra dollars each month. A few years ago, I posted some tee designs on Amazon when they opened their print on demand division, known as Merch. These evergreen designs had all been best-sellers on other POD platforms in the past so I figured they were a good place to start. And there they sat. I was pulling out my hair trying to figure ...