Welcome!

Thank you for stopping in to check out my gorgeous new website. It’s gorgeous because Shawna Lemay is a marvel. I’m deeply grateful to her for her design and photography throughout the site.

Once a week, I’ll be giving you my best editing advice. Each week, you’ll find a new set of tools you can use to edit your own work before seeking further editorial input, or submitting it to a publisher or agent.

To start, here’s a resource I love to turn to over and over. Canadian writer Robert Kroestch’s book, A Likely Story: the writing life, is a warm, unconventional guide to this life we’ve chosen, and my copy is so used, the spine has fallen apart. I hold it all together with a rubber band.

I’m in full agreement with Kroetsch here:

To be a writer, one must be, whatever else, a reader. One recognizes in texts the doubles that allow the writing self into the recognitions that become words.

Every guide book to the writing life will give you the same advice in different words, and they are words I live by. I usually have three or more books on the go at once, and the to-be-read stacks in our tiny house are ridiculous.

Until next week, happy writing and editing!