Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

  Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group (click on the badge above for the list) and connect with your fellow writers - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Time for the red pen! And now for my own post: Editing Hell (and you can take the first word as a verb or the whole thing as a compound noun). This is a live(ish)* report on the editing progress for Book 3 of the Pismawallops PTA mystery series (te...

This month's question: How do you know your story is ready? This is a great question for me just now, since I'm in the final stages of editing, revising, re-editing, and cover design for my next book, the 3rd Ninja Librarian book (see below...). Whether you are an author-publisher or have gone the traditional route, this is a question you have to address somewhere along the line. Whether the question is "is it ready to publish?" or "is it ready to send to agents?" you get to edit and revise and second-guess yourself more or less endlessly (having an editor and a contract might be helpful here, since someone will be telling you to finish it already). So how do you know when it's done? I have no idea how you know when your book is done. For me, it's a gradual process and a fuzzy decision. I gather my feedback, do everything I can, get a little more feedback...and when I reach the point that I really don't think I can make it any better, I give it t...

  Title: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to edit yourself into print Author: Renni Browne & Dave King Publisher: William Morrow. Second Edition, 2004. 278 pages. Summary: This is a step-by-step walk through the major areas in which fiction can go wrong, below the plot level (the book discusses things that affect plot, but they do not discuss the big plot issues of story arc, etc.). It includes checklists, exercises, and a list of top books for writers. Review:  Each chapter of this book addresses a different area of concern in your manuscript, and includes lots of examples. At the end of each chapter there is a summary checklist of the things you might want to do/look for in your book, and a set of exercises to try. I failed to notice until I finished that there is an appendix with the authors' take on how those exercises might be completed (these are editing choices. There is no one right answer).  As I read through the book, I marked things that I thought wer...