Andy Unedited
Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
All of us have our insecurities. Perhaps those of us who are writers are above average in this regard. We hesitate to write. We then hesitate to show anyone what we have written. Then we are reluctant to submit it for publication. Then we doubt anyone will like it if published. Finally, we are distressed …
In Write Better I emphasize the importance of staying focused on a narrow audience—even writing with just one person in mind. That can provide excellent guidance in knowing at what level to write, what to put in and what to leave out, what kinds of stories to tell, and how to organize your piece. Don’t …
Robert Caro’s book on Robert Moses and four books on Lyndon Johnson are legendary for their length (a total of almost 5,000 pages) and the length between volumes (about a decade). In Working, a collection of interviews and articles, we learn something of the method in his madness. His passion is not just to inform …
Charitable Writing Just released is a terrific resource by Richard Gibson and James Beitler entitled Charitable Writing. I was glad to offer this endorsement: “Who we are is absolutely foundational for anything we write. Gibson and Beitler take us to the heart of this largely unexamined principle. Without being grounded as people, our writing will …
Do I get letters? Yes. I get letters. Dear Mr. Editor Person: Often I read words or phrases that make my grammatical hair stand on end, my syntactical stomach churn, and my semantical head bow in grief. Someone uses “impact” as if it were a verb or “ask” as if it were a noun, and …
Should authors blog through the books they are writing? This does not have a one-size-fits-all answer. I wish I could have said a bit more about it in Write Better where careful readers may have thought they spotted a contradiction. In the preface I say, “Some of what is found in this book was originally …
Building an author platform continues to be a key challenge for people who want to get their work out to a wider audience. One piece in the ongoing task of becoming better known is an author website. Ken wrote this to me in response to a recent post on Andy Unedited: One thing that is …
Recently I was interviewed by Melissa Wuske in Foreword Reviews, which has focused on independent book publishing since its inception. To whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt below. You can find the whole interview here. Accessibility has been a huge boon to writers and editors. With so much information digitized, in a few keystrokes we …
For decades I have loved, reread, recommended, and extolled William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. He is wise, practical, enjoyable to read, and absolutely on target for new and experienced writers. While I have been dispensing writing advice for decades (to authors, in lectures, in writing), when I thought about doing a book on writing myself, …
How do you keep readers reading? How do you pull them through a chapter or article or blog without them getting bored or distracted? Fiction writers aren’t the only ones who can use a mystery to keep readers engaged. Nonfiction writers can also withhold a key piece of information—the whodunnit! It’s what I call the …