Tag Archives: editing

For Writers: Re-visioning, Rewriting, and Other Forms of Fine-tuning Your Fiction

As with all writing advice, mileage will vary according to the individual. The best thing as a writer that you can do is to pay attention to your own process and make it more effective. Experiment with lots of things, identify the practices that work, and incorporate them into your process. Keep experimenting, mixing things up a little, every once in a while, writing to the sound of whale songs, or dictating while hiking, or using a pen rather than the keyboard — it doesn’t matter what as long as you keep testing things in a way that lets you grow as a writer.
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Guest Post from Rhonda Eudaly: Writing Is Only Glamorous Until This Face Appears

Note from Cat: today’s guest blog post comes from Rhonda Eudaly. It’s the latest installment in the cavalcade of content here celebrating the upcoming release of my first novel, Beasts of Tabat. I thought long and hard about what to … Continue reading

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Some Slushpile Thoughts

In reading for Women Destroy Fantasy, I’ve cleared about two hundred stories away so far, and there’s still about a hundred I have yet to read. Some amazing stuff, some familiar names, and all in all, a slush pile that is full enough of solid stories that I could fill several issues. It’s been a great pleasure to be elbow deep in so much excellence. So here’s a few notes on the experience so far.
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Women Destroying Fantasy: What I’ll Be Looking For

I was just at a Kristine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith workshop where people were using the idea of reader “cookies” and “anti-cookies”, things that delight or turn-off a specific editor, increasing or decreasing the appeal of a story when they’re considering it.

So I’ll be open to submissions from March 15 through March 31 for the Women Destroying Fantasy issue. Here are some of my wants and a couple of things that will turn me off.
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Editing: How “Near” Was Arranged and Why

I blogged a couple of days ago about arranging stories and my philosophy for such arrangements. I wanted to show those principles in action by looking at the two ToCs for the book Near + Far.

As you may know, the book is divided into two parts, near future stories and far future stories. This allowed us to take advantage of the old Ace double format, where each half is one side of the book. It also meant creating two tables of contents, one for each section.

So here’s the order for the Near section, with some explication:
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If I did an editing class, what sorts of…

If I did an editing class, what sorts of things would people want to know? Here's some things that occur to me, but I'd like to know what else would be useful. – How magazines work and what an editor … Continue reading

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Happily Busy

The Writing F&SF class has come and gone, which frees up some time, but is kinda sad because it’s a fun way to spend an evening a week. I’ll be teaching at BCC at the end of July – the Blogging 101 class plus a one day workshop on writing flash fiction that should be a lot of fun on July 28th. Come August, I’m doing a teen workshop for the King County Library System at the Issaquah Library. Continue reading

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