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.