after the holidays

Picking up the threads of a story is difficult after a holiday. Here’s four suggestions for making it easier:
Read. Read through a couple

Line Editing

While we were traveling last week, I didn’t get any new scenes revised, but I did do some line editing.
3 Line Editing Strategies
When I line edit, I’m trying to balance three things:

Smooth, easy to read. First, I want the text to be smooth and easy to read. I try to read aloud or

editing

Simplify Your Picture Book Story
I’m currently revising a picture book and my major goal is to simplify the story.

Why simplify the story? At 1200 words, the picture book text is way too long. I needed to cut it about in half. Why? Sue Edwards has just been reading 50 picture books in a short amount [...]

Deborah Lytton: 2k9

This entry is part 3 of 10 in the series 2k9
Introduced first in 2007, authors debuting children’s books have formed a cooperative effort to market their novels. Last year, I featured many of the stories of how the 2k8 Novels Were Revised. This is part of the ongoing stories from the Class of 2k9 authors [...]

Revision: Understanding critiques

I seem to be thinking a lot about critiques these days, probably because I’m getting critiques from a couple different sources.
The Strengths and Weaknesses of a Critiquers
In critique groups, I find that writers/readers have different styles of critiquing.
Grammar Witches: This person always finds the punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes; I’m grateful for them, because fixing [...]