Open post
Woman reading on a tablet

Fiction is NOT a Genre…

Recently, I was skimming through a fellow editor's website (who shall remain nameless) and encountered a page where people were listing the titles of their manuscripts and their respective genres. OMG, the number of people that listed their genre as FICTION...

People, FICTION is NOT a genre. It tells us nothing about your story, except for the fact that it's made up. And it's not good enough to tell us the you write Young Adult or Middle-Grade either. All this tells us is who your target audience is.  Let's face it, a science fiction story is very different to a western. (However, you could have a Western SciFi — Firefly is the perfect example of this sub-genre.) A Young Adult SciFi and a Middle-Grade SciFi, on the other hand, will contain similar elements, all related to the SciFi genre.

Read More

Open post
Woman reading on a tablet

Young Adult: A Category or a Genre?

Whenever someone tells me they write young adult (often shortened to YA), my first response is always, "That's nice. So what genre do you write?" More often than not, I get a blank stare in response. The look in their eyes says it all.

"I just told you. I write YA."

At this point, I normally chuckle. "So you write fantasy." Most of those I meet who have made this young-adult-classification mistake write fantasy of some flavour, commonly urban fantasy.

However, sometimes I'll get that affronted look. "No. I write YA." To this, I bow my head in shame.

The confusion between genre and category is something that plagues every new writer. We're told that we have to categorise this piece of work that we have spent months, if not years, working on, but we don't want to fit into a box; we want to be in a circle. So… the question is, what does young adult really mean?

Read More

Open post

Misinformed Fathers and Aftershocks…

She sat at the dining room table staring at the laptop. The nerves were shot and she wasn't getting much sleep, but one thing was helping with her mental sanity — her writing. Ironically, the anxiety brought on by the quaky earth fueled the tension of her story.

Her cell phone chimed. It was a message from her father. "Don't worry about clean up at work. It's in the street." Her jaw dropped. Without pause, she flicked over to her web browser and brought up the University of Canterbury website, searching for signs of what her father was talking about. Her heart raced out of control with worry for her colleagues. While she had been working from home when the quake hit, she had been in email communication with those in the lab. She was afraid that one of them had died and she didn't know.

Read More

Open post

A New Excuse for Messy Bedrooms — Remembering February 22, 2011

"Clean your room. You know my rule."

The children bowed their heads, forlorn as a result of their mother's scowl. "Yes, mum. There must always be a clear path from the door to the bed."

It wasn't much to ask for as far as the mother was concerned. It really was just for a matter of safety. But the children went about their chores, knowing the consequences if they didn't. Their mother's wrath was not something anyone wanted to wage war with—and she knew it. Smiling to herself, she left her children to tidy the messes that they called bedrooms.

Sunday afternoon bounded along and it was time for inspection. The son had everything in its place: books on the shelves, desk clear, laundry in the hamper, and the bed made. He had even vacuumed. The daughter… Well… The mess had been carefully stowed away in the cupboards and stacked in unstable piles. The laundry was pushed under the bed and the covers were pulled back to give the false impression of a made bed. The mother shook her head in dismay.

Read More

Open post
Old-fashioned printing press.

By all means, rush the process.

Writing a manuscript takes time; editing it takes even longer. However, rushing the process is the biggest mistake that any new writer can make. One spends months, if not years, pouring everything, including their heart and soul, into this body of work. It's only natural to want to see it published—they have dreams. But dreams that are worthwhile require time and effort.

Editing a manuscript into something worth reading is not something that happens overnight. There are steps that every manuscript must go through before it finds itself as a book on the shelves of your local bookstore. Rushing the process will produce shoddy work that will result in very bad reviews, and not just from those that hate your story.

There are several different flavours to this Rush-The-Process dish.

Read More

Posts navigation

1 2 3 … 35 36 37 38 39 40 41
Scroll to top