You’re a businessperson. You may not think of yourself as a writer, but you know that writing well can boost your results and your career. Naturally, you want to do better. Every week I point you to articles and blog posts that I think will teach you something or spark an idea or two. The posts are about the intertwined tasks of reading and writing. Some weeks there are more pointers than others.
This week I’m pointing you to pieces on doing research for your book, books and blogs, and ten easy edits to improve your manuscript.
From Morgan Gist MacDonald: 5 signs you’re doing too much research
“When you begin working on a new writing project, if you’re like most normal people, you’ll begin to think absolutely crazy thoughts, like:”
From Ben Thompson: Books and Blogs
“A book, at least a successful one, has a great business model: spend a lot of time and effort writing, editing, and revising it up front, and then make money selling as many identical copies as you can. The more you sell the more you profit, because the work has already been done. Of course if you are successful, the pressure is immense to write another; the payoff, though, is usually greater as well: it is much easier to sell to customers you have already sold to before than it is to find customers for the very first time. There is, though, at least from my perspective, a downside to this model: a book, by necessity, is a finished object; that is why it can be printed and distributed at scale. The problem is that one’s thoughts may not be final; indeed, the more vital the subject, the more likely a book, with its many-month production process, is to be obsolete the moment it enters its final state of permanence.”
From Repo Kempt: 10 Easy Edits to Improve Your Manuscript Right Now
“I routinely edit manuscripts for fiction writers of all genres. When I read their material, I repeatedly see the same technical errors and problematic prose, all of which are easily preventable. Before you send that new short story off on submission or ask a friend to critique your novel, take each page and read it through carefully while following the steps below. Yes, this editing will take a while, but good writing only becomes great writing by investing your time and energy into improving it. And when you’re done, your work will really sing.”
Thanks to Daphne Gray-Grant for pointing me to this post
Sources I Check Regularly
I find the posts and articles that I share with you on The Writing Edge in many places. But there are a few that provide insightful pieces again and again. Here they are.