My Revise and Resubmit Adventure

Last year, I was querying a YA fantasy. It's the third story I've ever queried (and the second I've queried seriously), and it was going more or less like the last one had: a small handful of full requests that ultimately resulted in passes. And then I got a revise and resubmit. It was awesome! …

Why You Should Avoid Proposing Solutions While You Beta Read a Novel

Reading someone else's novel can be tricky. What level of feedback is right? How much is too much? Should you focus on a few big things, or try to do everything? It's hard, it's slippery, and it's easy to mess up. But do you know what makes beta reading really hard? The fact that writing …

A few of the Q&As from my very first book signing

I recently attended my very first book signing. It was at a small, local library, and it was a pretty small event, but hey--it was still an awesome experience. I've never attended a book signing before, and it was awesome to get to show off my writing and talk about my books. The book signing …

How Much Is Needed When You’re Giving a Critique?

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of my writer friends about critiques. She recently joined Scribophile, a critique website where you earn points by critiquing other people's content. Eventually, you can cash in those points in exchange for your own critique. So we started talking about critiques, and how a good critique …

Some of My Common Editing Pitfalls

So, first off: woo! I have a new job. This is going to mess with my schedule a bit. And since my first priority is making sure I keep writing on my schedule, this blog may flag a little. So I'm going to spend some time talking about something personal. I'm currently in the middle …

Being Badly Published is Worse than Being Not Published at All

A few weeks ago, I read a thread on Twitter by an author who had been submitting her novel to small publishers. And she got an offer! So she read some author reviews, researched the contract she was given, and decided to turn them down. The Twitter comments were bewildering: what? No! Why did you …

WriteOnCon 2019: A Retrospective

I attended WriteOnCon 2019 this year, and it was a blast! Let's talk about it. First off, what the heck is WriteOnCon? WriteOnCon is an annual, online-only writing convention for kidlit writers--people who write everything between picture books and young adult. It's three days of podcasts, panels, and blog posts about a variety of writing, …

WriteOnCon 2019!

Do you write kidlit? (You know, anything ranging from picture books to young adult.) Then maybe you'll be interested in WriteOnCon, an online writing convention for kidlit authors. I'm posting off-schedule today because today's the day that the WriteOnCon forums open--and the forums are where you can post your queries for the agent pitch sessions. …

On Using Criticism to Level Up, from Author Delilah S. Dawson

I normally write a way more wordy post every week. But this thread on when and how to take criticism on your work was just too perfect. Enjoy: https://twitter.com/DelilahSDawson/status/1087360935059181573 (It's a thread. Be sure to click through it and read the whole thing!) And now, an unrelated thought-dump on blogging, and what topics to blog …

How Much Do Authors Make? On the Authors Guild Survey and the Complex Topic of Income

Photo Credit: The Authors Guild. The Authors Guild released a survey a few weeks ago about how much the average author makes, and hooooooooo boy, it's not good. According to the survey, the median income for all writers is about $6,000, while the median for full-time authors is around $20,000. On top of that, roughly …