Writing

How I Found the Right Editor

Lynette M Burrows

It was more than luck. Creating a book takes a team. I spoke about how I chose my cover artist. How I found the right editor for My Soul to Keep was to search for the right one several months before I needed one. It took some work, some due diligence, and some patience. But it paid off. Which Type? The first step in my journey to find the right editor was to research the different types of editors. It can get confusing. When you search the internet there are folks who say there are four types, five types, nine types, and more! But for most freelancers, it boils down to four general types. Developmental editors who work with you on the structure and arc of the story. Copy editors examine your finished story for consistency, grammar, and flow. Line editors address the writing style, language, and content on a sentence level. Proofreaders are the nit-pickers who look for typos and misplaced words or punctuation. Each writer’s needs, every novel’s needs, are different. I had a mentor who had helped me with developing the story. But my weaknesses were grammar and consistency. So I needed a copy editor. But there […]

How I Found Amazing Mentors and You Can Too

Lynette M Burrows

In my previous post, I mentioned several mentors I’ve had. Each of my mentors has made significant contributions to strengthen my writing. But, someone asked, how do you find a mentor? It’s a good question. This is how I found amazing mentors and you can too. Know Yourself The first step in finding a mentor is assessing your own strengths and weaknesses. Are you solid with dialog but need help creating compelling characters? Do you have a weakness for long passages of description or backstory that slow your story’s pace? Are you great at beginnings but get bogged down in the middle? Be honest with yourself. Identify what you know and what you don’t know. If you don’t know how to even start, then you need to hit the books. Start learning the basics. That was where I started–with a correspondence course that taught me basic storytelling. How Much Do You Want It? It can be difficult to believe in yourself when you face the computer or the blank piece of paper. And your can-do attitude will take you a long way. Believe in yourself, in your ability to find the answers you need, and in your desire and ability […]

One Way to Learn to Write

Lynette M Burrows

When I decided to get serious about writing, I took a correspondence course. It was my first step in one way to learn to write. As I mentioned in my earlier post, “Writing is Easy…Until It’s Not,” this course was by mail. It doesn’t matter much which course it was, what matters is how I chose which course to take. This is one way to learn to write. It’s not the only way. I loved re-reading old childhood favorites and science fiction. So I figured I should learn one of those two genres. I thought writing for children would be the easier of the two genres. (Writing for children is not easy!) I looked for some one-on-one mentorship and studied each class syllabus. The structure of the class and what it covered had to make sense to me. I also weighed the course instructors. Criteria for instructors included: were they authors, what had they published when had they published, and did I like their work. Then I mailed in my sample writing and fees and waited for the first lesson. The lessons were not difficult for me, though by this time I was a new mom and had a hard […]