It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of motivation must one day receive edits that knock the wind out of her.

Yep, there is nothing like that email from a critique partner or an agent or an editor that suggests massive structural revisions or removal of a character or a completely different beginning or ending to make you think of weighting your pockets down with stones and slipping tragically into the water.

If you keep at this long enough and want to improve badly enough, it will happen.

Writing can feel solitary and it is, as long as you never let anyone read what you write. Once you do, though, you’ve opened the door to opinions. You’ve invited that reader into your world. You’ve given them a tiny piece of ownership.

You’ve also given yourself the gift of perspective. Maybe you think your main character is deliciously snarky. Maybe you think it’s romantic to have your couple bicker constantly. Maybe you like to have explosions that require suspension of disbelief in every chapter. Your reader can—and might—tell you that none of that works. Your reader hates your main character and wants to see her tied up and run over by a train. Your reader had parents who bickered constantly and she can’t stand to read books with bickering because it triggers her. Your reader was willing to go with you for the first suspension of disbelief and even hung in for the second, but not for the third.

This knowledge always hurts. Always. You wouldn’t have written it if you didn’t like it. You read it over three times and you liked it more on each read.

Here’s the tough truth: if you want to get it published, you listen.

You have to listen. Once a book is out in the world, it might have hundreds or thousands of readers. Maybe you are the outlier on bickering couples being adorable. Maybe most people hate them. Never assume that your beliefs are automatically correct. Doing so is nothing but sheer arrogance.

Caveat: if you never intend to publish the book, don’t worry about it. You don’t have to change a word. I admire people who write books with no desire to publish them, in theory, but I don’t know any.

So how should you react when you get edits that make you think you’d have been better off as a concert pianist? Wait. Think. Wait some more. After a day or so, the desire to raze villages and throw your computer out a window and write scathing subtweets will pass. After three days, you may calm down and realize that you can work with some of the suggestions, maybe even most of them. I recommend getting in there and crossing the low-hanging fruit off the list. Take out some of the em-dashes you use too much. Strike some overuse of your character’s names in dialogue. Do something. It can inspire you to do bigger revisions. You may even be able to see some daylight—maybe your reader was on to something that can take your manuscript to the next level.

Give the edit suggestions a chance. Save them in a file labeled “critiques.” You never know when you’ll wake up at three a.m. in eternal gratitude for the wisdom of your most beloved friend.

I am so excited to be a mentor for the SECOND year running! This makes me feel almost like an institution! Last year, I had a fabulous mentee who worked super hard and acquired an agent with her PitchWars manuscript IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. The year before that, I was in PitchWars myself and got my lovely agent, Sarah E. Younger, with my PitchWars manuscript.

I'm a lawyer and I write YA and WF. I love books about people and why they do what they do. I have two sons and an amazing husband and two frequently muddy beagles. I grew up in Detroit but now I live on a dirt road a mile from pavement in Virginia. I love all things British (tea, kilts, Austen, Rowling, Outlander), sports, hiking, movies (I haven't missed an Oscars broadcast since I was eleven), Broadway (I know every word of Hamilton - even "Guns and Ships"), and roller coasters (literal and literary). 

Yes, yes, you say. What does she have to offer me? Here’s my plan: I will read over your manuscript and give you big picture edits. Last year, I said you’ll need to put on your big kid pants before you open that email. Still true. I will tell you if your story starts in the wrong place, if your characters are developed, if your plot moves along, if your middle is saggy, and if your ending is satisfying. Then you fix. If there’s time, we’ll send it back and forth and I’ll go over it as many times as time permits. 

I have three close CPs (all PitchWars mentors and former contestants), and I think they’d agree I’m pretty good at spotting this stuff AND telling them in a constructive way that doesn’t make them want to burn down villages. I also have a writing group online (also, all PitchWars mentors and former contestants who keep me sane on a daily basis), and I hope they’d say the same. 

I had good success last year, but I make no promises: your manuscript is yours. It is not mine. I will not force you to make a change you disagree with. I will not harass you or talk smack about you on Twitter. I will make recommendations and the rest is up to you. Hence the no promises thing. I am human. So are you — I hope.

Unlike last year, however, I am mentoring YOUNG ADULT and only young adult. Do not send me adult manuscripts — I can’t help you with those. So, without further ado, here is my WISHLIST:

YOUNG ADULT CONTEMPORARY, YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE and YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL.


That’s it. 

I am not a good fit for YA fantasy, horror, dystopian, paranormal, science fiction, and gothic. If you send these to me, I’m going to pass you by. Life is too short to read all the books I want to read, and you’d be better served passing these to other mentors. There are a lot of amazing mentors who are salivating for those genres.


My favorite authors in YA are Rainbow Rowell and John Green. I also like Jenny Han and Sarah Dessen. Old school authors I love: S.E. Hinton and L.M. Montgomery. I like stories about real-feeling teens with real-feeling problems. Give me all the awkwardness. All the feeling that you're doing everything wrong. All the longing for escape but fear of it at the same time. The teen years are the razor's edge where everything is still possible: show me that sense that we've reached the moment when it takes almost nothing to tip a kid into perpetual success--or eternal tool-ishness.

I love romance of all kinds. I still read the scene where Anne realizes she loves Gilbert Blythe about once a year. I love to see that spark or chemistry between characters — romantic or platonic. I can handle a little magic realism in my contemporary or romance. I probably can't resist time travel, even though it technically fits in fantasy (why is time travel not its own genre? Seriously.). Snappy dialogue please.


I LOVE history. I was a history major. Any historicals are great by me. Bonus points if you have a historical with a romance.

I like issues: divorce, death, suicide, bullying, et cetera, but I like romance the most. Romance in the midst of issues is my favorite of all. I’m open to all re-tellings of classics: Jane Austen is my favorite, but also fairy tales, Shakespeare, myths of all varieties. I want diversity, but not forced diversity. If you added a character from every underrepresented group just to make sure you had one, I’ll notice the forcing. It should feel organic.


Here’s my standard caveat: It is your book and I mean that. However, if you can’t handle criticism and are prepared to fight me for every word of your deathless prose, don’t submit to me or anyone. Just don’t. Go on and query now. You’ll save us both a lot of time. If all you want is for someone to tell you you’re an amazing writer, you’re in the wrong place. I might suggest eliminating characters. I might suggest changing your title. I might suggest altering a subplot. I need you to have an open mind.


This contest is for people who want to IMPROVE their manuscript and their writing overall.


And that’s what we will do. Can’t wait to see what you’ve got!

​Scavenger hunt: A

Like most kids, I used to get sick. Strep throat, chicken pox, stomach flu. Nothing unusual, or even particularly frequent. I never minded. There was a delicious kind of routine to it. I’d tell my mother I felt bad, and she’d lay a cool hand on my forehead, and pronounce me sick. She’d immediately get all my favorite blankets and comforters and books and bring them downstairs to make a bed on the sofa so I could watch TV. She’d bring me special food, tell me ice cream was good for sore throats, and make her own cough remedy with equal parts honey, lemon juice, and some hard core alcohol—whatever they had on hand.
No matter how minor the illness, she was there. She held various jobs throughout my childhood, but whatever her responsibilities at the time, she’d be there to watch soap operas and I Love Lucy re-runs with me during my day of pampering. At night, when I’d feel worse, she’d stay up with me if my stomach roiled or my fever spiked, reading children’s poetry from a compilation she’d owned as a child with 1940s drawings of little girls in big hair-bows and boys in short pants.
I grew into my teen years. We fought plenty: over hairstyles and clothing styles and politics and TV shows (“I think Friends is stupid. All they do is talk.”). We screamed at each other. Sometimes we refused to speak to each other at all. We read together anyway – a tentative but permanent alliance over a love of words.
I went to college. She helped me move in and wiped away a tear while breathing a secret sigh of relief. From then on, we argued mostly over the phone. She had her opinions. I had mine. Neither of us was shy about sharing them.
I got married. My husband can’t afford sick time, so when I’m sick now—rarely, so rarely—I’m on my own. If I need a blanket, I get it myself. If I want honey-lemon cough remedy, I have to remember to pick up the ingredients at the grocery store myself. There is no one to feel my forehead.
My mom aged. Now she’s the one who’s sick. When I can, I go to be with her, but it’s not as often as I’d like. Her ailments can’t be cured by children’s poetry in the wee hours of the morning, anyway.
We’ve got history, but it’s mostly good. When I think of my mom, though, I always picture her late at night, shadowed in the light from that bedside lamp, reading poetry and standing guard, suffering through all feverish nights alongside me, the personification of safety.
It’s Mother’s Day. If you still can, go kiss your mom.

You never know everything there is to know about writing. You’re getting closer to success when you figure out you never will.

I grew up the child of two English teachers, one high school level and one college level. I imagine you can guess I wasn’t allowed to say “ain’t” and was expected to get the “and me/and I” distinction correct from about second grade. They edited my thank-you notes and Christmas list. I spent every free minute reading from the day I learned how to turn a page. I knew all the big words. I knew how to pronounce almost 75% of them. I knew everything.

And then I didn’t. Despite having achieved perfect grades in elementary school reading and spelling, I came in second in the middle school spelling bee. I didn’t know as much as I thought, or not, at least, as much as Christine Ecker did. I shook that off, though. I learned to spell the word I’d missed and moved on, recovering my confidence a little more every time somebody told me I was a good writer.

I’m here to tell you I knew nothing when I started writing fiction. Yes, I knew how to use quote marks and action verbs and to vary my sentence length and all the rest. It’s rare that I find a misspelled word in a manuscript, though I can tell you I did on Monday.

But I knew nothing about writing fiction. I thought I did, and I wrote two manuscripts before I realized it. Not surprisingly, the third one is better. I didn’t understand how to add depth to a character. I didn’t know how to write a riveting first sentence, first paragraph, or first page. I didn’t know how to keep a main character from veering too far into unlikable. I didn’t know how to walk the line between enough dialogue and enough narration. I didn’t know how much internal monologue is too much. I’d never thought about dialogue tags.

I had only the vaguest understanding of chapter structure, of narrative arc, of character journeys. I thought acts were only for plays. I didn’t see the problem when I added a character I needed at the 80% point. I assumed readers wouldn’t mind if I took a few pages to introduce the characters before I made anything happen to them. I didn’t understand that a main character has to have agency: she has to do things and not just watch things happen to her.

As if I needed any more icing on the clueless cake, I didn’t even know all the rules of mechanics I thought I did. I didn’t know to leave off the comma when a subject is the same in two clauses. I’d been fuzzier than I thought on when to use single quotes and when to use double ones. I used a lot fewer action verbs than I thought.

Keep learning. I’m only now beginning to understand all I don’t know. The universe of what I don’t know about writing shocks me with its enormity. The fact that I can see that now gives me hope that I’ve made progress.

Just keep writing.

I’ve said this on Twitter before: you cannot write a book without a critique partner (CP). A critique partner is a person who will read what you’ve written with an eye toward helping you improve it. Here’s a short list of people who read your work who are NOT critique partners: your best friend who never tells you when you have spinach in your teeth, anyone who says “I don’t really read a lot,” and your mom. 

I have a lot of critique partners (CPs for short). It’s a lot of work to critique someone’s work properly, but you have to put in the time if you want someone else to do the same for you. (And you can learn a hell of a lot from reading other people’s writing.) My CPs are genius savior rock stars who easily number among the most important people in my life. If you plan to write anything (book, blog post, random email), take this advice if you take no other advice: GET A CRITIQUE PARTNER.

This post is about how to critique for someone in the most effective way. There are good ways to critique, and bad. Let’s talk about that.
First off, a proper critique generally doesn’t tell the writer that the manuscript is wonderful, perfect, better than J.K. Rowling, don’t change anything. This is not helpful. Or likely to be true. Almost all manuscripts can be improved. If you suspect that your writer friend wants only that kind of praise, tell her to send it to her mom or the friend who ignores her spinach-teeth.

Consider where in the editing process the manuscript you’re about to critique is. Is this the very first draft? If so, this is not the time to correct commas or make sure her Game of Thrones references are italicized. So much will be changed that there’s no point in worrying about this now.

What to look for in a first draft:

• A riveting beginning: does it start in the right place? Is there somewhere else that might be better? Are you confused by the action or bored by the lack of action? Are you confused by the number of characters introduced? 
• Pacing: Does the overall action keep you turning pages? Are there slow or draggy spots? Is there a scene that goes by so fast it makes your head spin? Are there unnecessary scenes that do nothing to move the plot?
• Character: Do you like the main character? Can you root for that person all the way through? Are the secondary characters fully developed? Do you want more? Do their interactions make sense?
• Dialogue: Does it sound natural? Does it either forward the plot OR develop character?
• Structure: Does the timeline work? If there are alternating timelines or POVs, do they work? Do they balance reasonably? Are they distracting? Do the different POVs sound like different people?
• Conflict and Tension: Is there conflict? In every scene as well as overall? Is there anything the author needs to do to up the tension or sustain it? 
• World-building: Does the setting make sense? If it is real, is it consistent with accepted reality and knowledge? Is the history accurate? If fantasy, is it consistent with the rules the author has made? Do you feel like you understand the rules the author has made?
• Continuity/Errors: Is the main character using a cell phone in 1992? Is someone playing baseball in December? Do anyone’s eyes change color?
• Consistent grammar problems: Are there examples where the author clearly does not know a particular grammar rule? 
• Ending: Is it satisfying? Is there a climax or does the story just sputter to a halt? 


If you find fault in any of these areas (and you should—a perfect first draft is rare as a unicorn), you are not doing anyone a favor if you keep silent about these things. BE HONEST.

There are ways to say this that are better than others. First: THE PRAISE SANDWICH. Point out what works. Add comments in line where you laughed or cheered or particularly enjoyed. Is a particular line that struck you as poetic or lyrical? A scene that you loved? Say so. This serves two purposes: first, it will make your friend happy and reassured that she hasn’t written the worst thing ever. Second, it will make it more likely that she’ll keep the good parts when she revises. 

When you point out what doesn’t work, suggest alternatives. Don’t say you hated the ending without telling her nicely what about it didn’t work. It’s even better if you suggest a way that might be better. She may not take your suggestion, but you might have helped her come up with yet another way.

What to look for in a later draft: 

• All of the above things. It’s still better to point these out before it goes out as a query or to an agent or to an editor, rather than not pointing it out at all. Sometimes well-intentioned revisions in one area can mess in a negative way with another area. She might have fixed the beginning but killed character development. 
• Now it’s time to catch the line-edit-y things. Punctuation. Spelling. Typos. Paragraphing. Quote marks. Italicization. Here’s an aside: I don’t see myself as a line editor for my CPs when I read their work. They will correct these things on their own. They all know as much about mechanics as I do or more. If I see things like this, I’ll point it out, but usually by the later draft stage, they’ve fixed most of this. 

After you send it back: Write an overall letter to let them know your thoughts. Think Praise Sandwich. Even if you don’t know what it was that bothered you about a particular section or character, say that you were bothered. Offer to bat ideas back and forth. Then be available to do that. Brainstorming with someone who’s read your work is invaluable.

An important thing to remember when you’ve critiqued a manuscript is that you have no right to expect or demand that all your suggestions are taken. In the end, the manuscript belongs to the person who wrote it. You are only volunteering your time to help them. 
​
Bottom line. Critiquing is all about the Golden Rule. Do Unto Others As You Would Have Done Unto You. I don’t send off my manuscripts to people to tell me they are wonderful as they are. (I have a mom for that.) I want them to help me make them better. I will never know everything I need to know. I want honesty with a dash of kindness and encouragement.

This probably doesn’t come as news to anyone reading this, but the holidays are slow in publishing. Slooooow. Glacial. Watch-icicles-form speed. There’s a good reason for this. Agents and editors frequently work in New York, which, in a lot of cases, is far from their hometowns, and they travel home during the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Like you, they have family obligations, holiday parties to go to, kids out of school far more often than usual, and a killer list of non-work tasks to accomplish. As a matter of course, most read their queries and requested/submitted materials at night. When nights are spent trimming a tree, going to obligatory cocktail parties, or baking cookies for the office exchange, there’s a LOT less time to read manuscripts. I know this sounds crazy, but many would prefer to actually talk to their families during the holidays than read your manuscript. I know, right?

Bottom line: expect no activity in your writing-related email box until the middle of January. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Some agents and editors will surprise you and get back to you during December. Some like to clean off their desks before they leave to go home to Des Moines or wherever. Take all gifts like that as gifts. Appreciate, don’t expect.

What should you do to kill the time? Staring at your calendar or your inbox is not productive. It will induce panic and twitchiness. Trust me: I tried that last year. It didn’t work.

Instead, here are twenty things to do to distract yourself.
*Volunteer. At a food bank or a school or a charity or anywhere at all. Call them. They’ll be delighted to fill your hours.
*Find somewhere to ice skate. Fall down a lot.
*If you celebrate Christmas and decorate, try to incorporate a book theme.
*Bake some cookies. Eat them all.
*Bake more cookies. Give them away to unexpected people: the mailman, your child’s teacher, the receptionist at your work.
*Call your parents. Tell them you love them.
*Go for a hike outside of a city. Find somewhere with a view. Take deep breaths.
*Go to the mall and watch the children on Santa’s lap. You can see the full range of emotion written on their faces and those of their parents. It’s a character goldmine.
*Go to a concert. Any concert. Any kind. Music is good for the soul.
*Watch Love Actually. Greatest holiday movie ever.
*Listen to the Hamilton Broadway Cast recording. Discover that you are extremely interested in the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, who you vaguely remember is on the ten dollar bill. Cry.
*Stay off social media for a full twenty-four hours. Pretend you’re a time-traveler. Marvel at how much time you have to read.
*Talk to your own family. You’d be surprised how interesting they can be.
*Read. Challenge yourself to read four books in your genre before New Year’s and one far outside your genre.
*Swap manuscripts with someone. Help her get ready for January, and she’ll do the same for you.
*Put money in the Salvation Army red bucket. Add a note.
*Outline an idea for a book you will not allow yourself to start until January. Feel the thrill of germination when you can’t write it.
*Do three kind things for other people every day. Vary it up. Hold doors. Pay for the car behind you at the drive-thru. Give big tips. Say something nice to someone you don’t have to speak to.
*If you live where it snows, go out and play. Catch a snowflake on your tongue. Make snow angels. Throw a snowball. Then drink a hot beverage.
*Build a fire. Be warm. January is coming. I promise.

Sometimes writing, revising, and attempting publishing is so hard it feels like trying to bend a spoon with your mind. In theory it’s possible, but maybe only for those with superpowers. I’ve written before about the waiting, the self-doubt, the impatience, and the pain of the rejection. All of that is real. This post is not to diminish the difficulties of the writing life.

I went on vacation recently to Nantucket. I’d never been before, and I’d always wanted to go. I love islands, and the ocean, and historic preservation, and Nantucket is a perfect Venn diagram of all of those things. It is also one of the places where the threads of my family tree begin. Years ago, I survived a brief but expensive addiction to Ancestry.com. Go ahead. I dare you to walk away once you start. It turned out that some of my ancestors on my father’s side had settled Nantucket, and begun its whaling industry.

Until the discovery of petroleum in the mid-nineteenth century, whale oil from sperm whales was big business. Whales also produced stays for corsets and ambergris for the manufacture of perfume. It was the oil, though, that sent all the ships out of Nantucket Harbor. It lit houses in lanterns and candles, and lubricated the machinery of the world’s factories.

Sailors on whaling ships signed onto a ship and left home for up to five years. By the early 1800s, whales close by in the Atlantic had been overfished. Ships went further and further from home – to the coasts of South America and as far as Japan. Catching and killing a whale meant riding out in a rowboat with nothing but a harpoon and a long knife and riding the back of a creature much larger than the boat. Once harpooned, the whale would bolt, taking the attached rowboat on a hair-raising out-of-control ride of miles at speeds comparable to a speed boat until the whale was tired. Then they had to use the knife to kill it. Once dead, the whale would be towed miles back to the ship with no more power than four men at the oars, raised on scaffolding on its side, and harvested right then and there. It was nasty, smelly, filthy work of days with no sleep and little to eat.

Once the oil made it to the barrels, the ship would go off, in search of more whales. The men occupied themselves with shipboard tasks, scrimshaw, and letters home. Mail was rare and spotty, and most of the time, the sailors had no idea whether their pregnant wives had given birth, whether their parents had survived another month, or whether their houses had burned down with whole families lost. I’m sure they worried about these things, however.

For those of you who only dimly remember Moby Dick from high school, I recommend reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea for some insight into the history of whaling, and how even something as hard as that can get a thousand times worse. A movie of the latter, starring Chris Hemsworth, is coming out in December.

I came back from Nantucket in awe of the toughness of that life, for the sailors as well as their families, for my own ancestors who survived generations this way. My life, by comparison, is both easy and good. I can write and edit and fret in my warm house, clean and dry. My family is close by. I have as much support as I need.

I’m not saying the writing life isn’t hard. I am saying that sometimes it’s good to go out and get a little perspective. Try it.