As a kid, I loved poring through the dictionary, revisiting worlds I’d been to and worlds I hadn’t. Today, I like to reference it when I’m helping authors develop their own magical places.
Read moreHow Can You Tell if a Scene Is Working? It’s Child’s Play
As you’re mapping out new scenes or reviewing the ones you’ve already written, see if they pass this test.
Read morePage Turners: Pierce Alquist
Page Turner Pierce Alquist is a publishing professional living and working in Boston. She's a Book Riot contributor and reviewer specializing in international literature in translation. A voracious traveler and foodie, you can find her in her kitchen making borscht or covered in red pepper paste as she perfects her kimchi recipe. You can find her on Twitter @PierceAlquist.
Read more4 YA Books I've Loved This Year
I write monthly YA reviews for BookPage, and I've been so lucky to receive a string of incredible novels over the past few months. In case you needed a reason to hightail it to your local independent bookstore, here are my 2018 reviews...so far.
Read moreRead & Write the Books You Love
While there will always be snobs and sticklers out there waiting to criticize us for reading and writing “the wrong things,” I think what’s important is that we’re reading and writing whatever we feel compelled to read and write.
Read moreLost Your Train of Thought? Five Ways to Get Your Novel Back on Track
You race through the first forty or fifty or sixty pages like it’s nothing, and you just know you’ll have a finished first draft in no time. Then suddenly, you stop. This story and the characters that were so clear at first have vanished, the words have dried up, and you have no idea where to go next.
Read moreMy Editorial Philosophy
I have high standards, and I’ll shoot you straight, but my goal is to guide and inspire each author I work with to meet those standards and create a manuscript she can be proud of.
Read moreWriters' Rituals
For writers, there’s a fine line between ritual that helps us out and ritual upon which we become dependent.
Read moreRevision Is Not Optional (And That Should Be a Relief)
Yes, the revision process is tedious and painful and frustrating. But isn’t it also liberating?
Read morePage Turners: Marie Sweetman
Page Turners is part of my "Literary Luminary" series, featuring insights on writing and publishing straight from the folks who do it for a living. Page Turner Marie Sweetman is an acquisitions editor at Wayne State University Press in Detroit, MI. She acquires scholarly work in the areas of fairy-tale studies and film and media studies.
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