Category: Writing
The Inside Tells a Story – Interior Design Matters
When you open a book and look inside, there are certain things a reader expects— title page, copyright page, maybe a dedication, and a table of contents, especially for nonfiction. A self-publishing author determines the content of these pages, but it could be a steep learning curve for a writer to get everything laid out…
A Book and Its Cover
It may be true about people that ”you can’t tell a book by its cover,” but when it comes to actual books, the cover is an important selling tool. Certainly, this advice is emphasized in every source about self-publication. When I stroll down the aisles of a library or bookstore, or click through lists on…
Taking Your Baby to School – Finding Readers for a” Finished” Manuscript
Every writer knows that at some point you have to take your “baby” (the manuscript) into the wider world. It is said the work of writing a book is a solitary endeavor, but to get a manuscript to its best, it needs to be exposed to others. The fresh eyes every author needs are those…
Editing Dilemmas
Writers know that the work has only started when the first draft is complete. Details, additional plot twists, and character development will be added to help the story hang together. That kind of editing is fun. But, for me, the tightening and condensing of my prose is more difficult. How can I close the door…
Is It Vanity? The Decision to Self-Publish
In the spring of 2013, after more than a year of sending out my manuscript to agents and the few publishers who accept un-agented work, I began to get weary. I want my book to be available to readers while I am still around to feel the satisfaction of a job completed. All around me…
Thanks to my 3 D’s – The Value of a Writing Group
The journey to turn my earlier nonfiction manuscript into a novel was long and sometimes difficult. As I wrote new sections, added dialogue, and struggled with what bits to delete, my writers’ group, women I met years ago through the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), remained staunchly behind my efforts. They have…
Nonfiction Morphs into Fiction
When I began talking with Herman about his experiences, I had already enjoyed some small success as a writer of stories and articles for the youth market. Naturally, my first thought was to turn his adventures into a nonfiction book for middle-grade readers. However, because during most of the story Herman is in his early…
Joy at the National Archives – Research and Primary Documents
As I worked on my manuscript, I continued to immerse myself in movies, novels, and all kinds of nonfiction about WWII—from books to online articles, from the German documentary titled The Ritchie Boys to Lucky Forward by Robert Allen—but I still felt inadequate to write the chapters about Herman’s time at Camp Ritchie and his wartime activities in Europe.…