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With a Ph.D. in American literature, Marc D. Baldwin has been writing, editing and teaching for 37 years. He’s published a scholarly study of Ernest Hemingway and numerous articles in various literary journals, and is president of Edit911, Inc.

Inside the Mind of a Managing Editor: What Makes or Breaks a Query

In 12 years of publishing experience, I have received my share of queries from hopeful writers. I have seen the good, bad, and ugly along the way! Whether submitting a book manuscript or magazine article, follow these Do’s and Don’ts to ensure you write a query that is well received by the Editor.

Do be familiar with the magazine. There is no quicker way to ensure your query is dismissed than writing one that doesn’t fit the magazine’s focus. If possible, review several copies of a publication before submitting a query to make sure your query is on track.
Don’t submit queries with grammatical errors! If the query is not in good shape, the Editor will not assign you a longer project. Editors want to take good writing to the next level. Mediocre writing lags the production schedule and chances of using a writer again. You can submit your writing anytime to Edit911.com so that you can rest easy that your query or book is without grammatical errors that might hold your writing project back.
Do consult the guidelines for submitting. In today’s market, many book publishers will not accept submissions from anyone but a literary agent. Others gladly accept queries, want entire chapters submitted, or ask for the entire book. Some just want outlines. Check the guidelines before submitting to save possible wasted time and effort.
Don’t critique or complain. Slow response? No response? The editor will not respond positively to negativity. Be patient. The worst reaction I ever received? I was sent a certificate of award for being a mean Editor! (I’m not kidding either!)
Do find creative twists on tried and true topics. How do you take those tent pole issues and provide a creative take on a topic? Look at the last several back to school issues before submitting your own back to school topic. Brainstorm for a creative book title that grabs an Editor’s attention from the start. The more creative you are, the better. You just might catch the attention of an Editor … and win an assignment!
Don’t be a high maintenance writer. It’s great to ask questions but don’t go overboard. Editors are glad for you to clarify but limit your questions to the most important ones. Yes, e-mail is the preferred form of communication but don’t abuse this convenience. Lots of back and forth is tiring to an Editor in today’s world of nonstop e-mail.
Do ask for an editorial calendar or for needs the editor has currently. They just might give you a leg up on those who blindly submit queries, especially if no other writers have submitted on a specific topic.
Don’t miss your deadline! There’s no quicker way to lose an Editor’s trust. If you know you are going to miss a deadline, e-mail ahead of time and renegotiate a date. You must meet this second due date on time!

Five Existentialist Elements to Ignite Your Novel

Existentialism is a philosophy espoused by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, adopted in great measure by the Modernist authors—most notably Hemingway—and followed, if not fully understood, by many people throughout the 20^th century and even today.

It’s pretty controversial and very interesting. Its 5 principal aspects have comprised the personalities and driven the plots of hundreds of characters and novels. Many writers and readers alike have found an eerie fascination with and attraction to existentialism. You might too.

Life is Absurd

Existentialists say that they believe that there is nothing lasting or real, no absolutes, no final purpose, or anything worth any effort. This ironic and somewhat disingenuous position is undermined by their own insistence upon its absolute truth. If there is nothing real, absolute, or meaningful, then neither is that claim itself. So, they deconstruct themselves.

Nonetheless—petty semantics aside—believing that life is absurd is a darkly comedic place to start in fashioning your protagonist’s personality. Read “The Underground Man” by Dostoevsky. What a ride!

If a character believes life is absurd, it probably is for her. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. She may live in isolation and frustration, never satisfied or happy, since nothing means anything. So why bother to try? She could end up paralyzed by her own absurdity. A walking, talking joke.

Absurdity, after all, is the collision between the rational and irrational. Is it not crazily absurd to try to reason with a lunatic? I’m sure you’ve experienced such close encounters, and they make for delightfully comedic scenes—though not necessarily much fun when you’re actually playing a part in them.

Let it Be, Let it Be

The antidote for such absurdity is the character focusing on just “Being.” Read Kosinski’s Being There. What a book. (And what a movie, starring Peter Sellers in his last role.)

Truth, with a capital T, resides in striving toward, in becoming. People attain meaning in their lives not in stasis, but rather in flux. Change enervates; movement defines.

And yes, the Beatles wrote many existentialist lyrics about many intriguing fictional characters. There was Eleanor Rigby “wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.” There was Rocky Raccoon, the walrus, that mean Mr. Mustard, the girl who came in through a bathroom window, the taxman, the helter skelter crew (Manson’s lunatics), Mr. Kite, Prudence, Rita the meter Maid, and Lucy in the sky with her diamonds. Absurd characters, one and all. And all fascinating, all classics—all because they just focused on being themselves, living in their own worlds.

Face the Dread

Is there a better word than “dread” to describe that black hole depression, those moments of awful, utter clarity that life may, indeed, be meaningless? In Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Kurtz stared into the abyss and saw “The horror. The horror.”

Existentialists believe that people must face the dread of existence, popularly known as angst, the German word for “anxiety or anguish.” Dread is an awareness that anything is possible, that insecurity is infinite. If accepted, dread destroys all faith in finite ends and prepares the individual for the infinite faith of “Positive Nothingness.”

Characters in the death grip of dread palpitate with authenticity. Try to author such a character. Authorize him with a paradoxical positivity in his nothingness. He knows he’s nothing, but he’s down with that. He can cope—that is until he implodes or explodes.

Make Conscious Choices

Taking charge of your meaningless existence by making deliberate, decisive choices is another strategy characters employ to create a meaning in life when they believe there isn’t one.

Note again the deliciously paradoxical nature of existentialism: only through choosing do we define and construct our individuality. Though all is absurd, meaningless, and dreadful, one must move purposely through life, not drift through it. By choosing, we create our “selves.”

Commit or be Committed

Finally, the existentialist must make commitments or go utterly insane. It’s Orwell’s doublethink that Winston Smith couldn’t quite grasp, and so he was defeated and committed to a life of dreadful meaningless. One simply must accept the pointlessness while refusing to be pointless himself. That’s the point of life: effort and accomplishment become the reasons to exist.

This formula for survival is Sartre’s “Doctrine of Engagement.” Talk is cheap; there’s no individual reality except in deeds and actions. That’s all that means anything—that is if anything means anything. Said Sartre, “Freedom is responsibility.” Have your characters mull that one over awhile.

Ultimately…

When the absurdity of life is recognized, just being alive is enough, the dread has been stared down, choices made, and responsibility assumed, your existence claims a value in and of itself. In the end—our only friend, saith the Lizard King–nothing else makes sense or is real except existence itself.

5 Fantastic Philosophies Writers Can Use: Thinking like Ralph Waldo Emerson

America’s main man when it comes to philosophizing, Emerson made philosophy accessible and even fun for people. We can learn a lot from Emerson to use in our writing. He’ll make you think, that’s for sure. Here’s 5 philosophical ideas to kick start your writing.

#1: Defy stereotypes

If you’re looking through his writing for an organized manifesto, don’t bother. His style is rambling, anecdotal, analogical, and allegorical. He’s all over the place. But there’s big fat six carat diamonds of ideas everywhere you look throughout his writing.

He can’t be labeled or pinned down. He’s much bigger than any one idea:

A Romantic in his pursuit of the unattainable reconciliation of opposites
A Realist in “speaking the rude truth” about life
An Idealist in believing there’s a deeper truth behind all appearances
A Naturalist in depicting nature as a force that determines your fate

He’s all those things and so much more…

#2: Transcend

One of the key developers of Transcendentalism—a philosophy with roots in the Europeans Carlyle and Kierkegaard—Emerson forged its American brand. A transcendentalist:

Looks for a reality beyond materialism and reason
Aspires to a high idealism, transcending this world
Holds to a “moral law” through which man can discover the nature of God
- A living spirit of God, not—Emerson believed—the conventionalized, formalized, fundamentalized God of Christianity
- God reveals himself everywhere and at all times
- Nature is the revelation of God
- Uses intuition as the primary faculty for perceiving and understanding the world
- Seeks his Over‑soul: the universal, collective unconsciousness, or Spiritus Mundi. He believed we all share common thoughts and ancient, mythical properties that our intuition can tap into.

#3: Organicize

By organicism, Emerson meant “the marriage of thought and things.” You can make use of this theory by:

Choosing just the right word, “not its second cousin,” as Twain said.
Using physical things as metaphors or images of unseen spiritual forces, loaded with extra meanings, such as:
- Melville’s Moby Dick
- Wordsworth’s lakes and fields of wildflowers
- Twain’s Mississippi river
- Composing stories with a transcendent unity:
  - Where the Me and the Not‑Me are joined
  - All of nature, including the body, is Not‑Me; only the soul is Me
  - 60 years later or so, W.B. Yeats called this “There”, where the opposites interpenetrate.

#4: See and Be “Sublime”

Beautiful word, “sublime.” It’s a feeling you get when things aren’t just pretty or picturesque, but when they strike you as “awesome.” I put quotation marks around “awesome” because we’ve worn that word out so badly, it’s lost its meaning. When something is truly “awesome,” you’re struck dumb beholding it.

Try for the Sublime, in your writing through descriptions that are:

Like a child seeing something for the first time
Written with an “innocent eye” or a “transparent eyeball”
- Emerson felt we all need a “general education of the eye”
- As in movies where an innocent, helpless character wanders through a dangerous hood, looking all around with unafraid curiosity
- As in a trusting and mellow state of mind
- Fresh with dazzling, surprising details
- Appreciative of the wonder of creation

As Emerson’s protégé, Henry David Thoreau, said: “Wisdom does not inspect but behold.”

#5: Live a Life of Self‑Reliance

Emerson took Calvin’s work ethic, common sense, and man’s need for sheer survival instincts, and rolled them up into his principle of Self-Reliance. Nothing really new to human history, but new to philosophy, new for a piece of writing. His essay by the same name is at once philosophical, witty, wise, and full of excellent advice for all people— including writers. How so?

No one’s going to hold your hand at the keyboard. If you want to write great works, you have to do it yourself.
Heroic characters are almost all self-reliant. Who doesn’t like stories about heroes, small or large, famous or anonymous? They make for great plots and compelling reading.
A terrific way to get an idea for a story—a springboard or starting off point, a theme or inspiration—is to start with a great quote. Read these incredible Emerson quotes and tell me you couldn’t write a story about any of them?
- “Society everywhere is a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”
- “Speak the rude truth.”
- “Whoso would be a man must be a non‑conformist.”
- “Trust thyself.”
- “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
- “To be great is to be misunderstood.”
- “Traveling is a fool’s paradise”

Read and absorb some Emerson. He’ll inspire you to rely on yourself, identify and break through stereotypes, thereby transcending your environment and organically growing your mind and senses, your talents and strengths, all the while seeking, appreciating and living the sublime life.

Sloppy Writing: Top 10 Ways to Clean It Up

Have you been told that your writing is sloppy? Does your writing lose its effectiveness because people stumble through it? Below are 10 steps to take to help clean up your writing.

Use shorter sentences. Nothing makes writing more difficult to read than long sentences. Shorten them. But this doesn’t mean to count words for every sentence you write. The goal is to make sentences easier to read. Chop unnecessary words. Take out long dependent phrases, clauses, and strings of prepositional phrases. Your readers will thank you!
Read it aloud. If your own writing is confusing to you, then it will definitely be to someone who does not know what you intend to say! You will hear many things that sound incorrect to your ear and help you become a better writer. Plus you will find common mistakes, such as leaving out or duplicating words.
Give it to someone else to read. Ask that person if your writing makes logical sense, gives a clear argument, is confusing, or has areas that need to be rewritten—whatever you think tend to be your weak points. You might just get feedback that is extremely helpful from a source you never saw coming.
Outline your thoughts and make sure your writing follows it. Some like to jump into their writing efforts without outlining or thinking through what they are going to say. Not outlining means you will ramble and can easily lead to sloppy writing.
Use subheads. Subheads will bring organization to your writing and help keep you and the reader keep track. Remember the rule of never having one subhead stand by itself. And it is OK to have several different levels of subheads in your writing.
Keep your main idea in front of you. This is so important, especially when writing an essay or dissertation. Take away the main idea and sometimes the purpose of writing becomes blurry. If need be, include your main idea as a header on every word processing page or post it on your computer screen as you write.
Think of possible objections. If you think ahead how people might differ with your assessment, facts, or hypotheses, then you will be better able to craft your argument to win them over. Clear thinking makes persuasive writing.
Know the audience you are writing for. There is no greater mistake than to miss the audience to whom you are writing. People may only give you one chance to win them over. Plus, editors will dismiss your writing quickly if you miss the audience.
Use spell check and grammar check. I tell students that God created these handy tools and meant for students to use them. Even professors forget occasionally, but these checkers catch so many mistakes. It is no excuse to forget these essential tools.
Think of communicating to a novice. What questions would he have? How do you put your writing into simple terms? Simplifying is a difficult task for some assignments, but writing with these questions in mind will cause you to understand the subject matter on a different level and communicate it more clearly to the reader.

Death by Detail: How to Find a Balance Between Detail and Insanity in Your Writing

I remember Hemingway’s descriptive writing enthralling me at times and then sometimes driving me batty. The Old Man and the Sea was so descriptive; I got seasick just reading it! That’s the way it goes with details! But as you write your own dissertation, how do you decide when enough is finally enough? Do you need more detail or work to get it perfect? Does it need to be a masterpiece? Try the following to help you know where to draw the line in your dissertation writing.

Limit your study from the beginning. This means you must closely identify and outline your focus. The more you do up front, the more helpful this will be for later. Likely, you will have to limit your writing even further once you get into it. It is OK to save portions of your research for later if need be.
Have professors approve bibliographies before putting in the research, especially your literature review. This practice holds you accountable to a specific list of books, but it also gives you room to push back later if extra books are suggested. Every dissertation needs limits, even in a literature review.
Limit quotes. Use quotes only when they communicate in ways you could not possibly summarize in your own words. The problem with quotes is that they forever seem to expand in dissertation writing. Use sparingly.
Make use of your appendices. Add information to an appendix that is not absolutely necessary for the body of your dissertation. Your surveys, letters, research questions, etc. can all go into an appendix.
Add commentary and information to footnotes only if necessary. This practice can grow uncontrollably. Every resource listed could have additional commentary, but they all are not necessary to your dissertation.
Let someone else read your dissertation who is not familiar with your studies. You might be surprised at the insight they bring into the discussion. It is OK to ask specifically for the reader to note areas that seem confusing, either in language choice or level of detail. But also allow for your readers to make insights from other disciplines or their life experiences.
Turn your fine-tuning over to a pro like Edit 911. There is always room to take your writing to the next level. Edit 911 staff will work out the details of style and formatting so you don’t have to worry about areas where you don’t feel confident.
No second helpings! If you start correcting things that have already been changed once back to the original wording, then you have edited enough. Yikes! Don’t duplicate work. You can forever tweak your dissertation. A wise professor told me that my dissertation could either be perfect or it could be finished! Aim for completing it.
If your professor says it’s good enough, you’re done! No questions asked. You may want to perfect your paper but don’t get into that game. If you get it published, you will probably have to make additional changes anyway to meet the expectations of the publisher.

Wise Up: How the Advice of the World’s Oldest People Can Focus Your Writing

Have you ever seen coverage of the world’s oldest living people? Reporters evidently are required to ask the same question: What is your secret to such a long life? Now that’s a good question, but the answers are even better. I found that their wise comments bring focus to how you live and enhance good writing as well.

Obey your parents. Usually the person who says this reminds the listener that this advice also is one of the 10 Commandments. A pretty basic teaching for kids, plus it is the only command that comes with a promise—that you will live a long life if you do. Hmm! But then again, there is something to the basic teachings that help you later in life. Obeying my parents actually paid off in my writing. In fact, the first time I was ever published was because of my mom. Our local newspaper published a scary story contest for middle schoolers. When our teacher made us all write a story for this contest, I wrote the scariest alien story I could muster. When my mom heard this, she immediately made me rewrite it, telling me to imply scary rather than hit people over the head with it. I took this idea to heart and was published in the local newspaper! Go for the basics and keep your writing simple (and listen to your parents).

Exercise every day. Some of the oldest living people get out and walk every day. Good writing thrives on writing some each day. It may not always be good, but it will build your writing prowess for the long haul.

Keep your mind sharp. Older people say they keep their minds sharp by challenging it, whether with a crossword puzzle or a game of checkers. How do you keep your mind sharp as a writer? Force yourself to write things you don’t normally write. Try writing a haiku, sonnet, or Shakespearean play. Read all sorts of writing. Pick up something you have never read before. Try something you always thought you would hate. You might be surprised!

Learn something new. I knew a gentleman who learned one new word a day and used it in conversation at some point during that day. You can learn something new as a writer by visiting the Edit 911 blog every day, taking classes, or talking with other writers. Make it a goal to learn new things!

Say, “I’m sorry.” The world’s oldest married people often utter that statement! Learn to admit your mistakes. Ask for forgiveness. It will change your life and help release some burdens that you can carry for years otherwise. If you mess up as a writer, sharing more information than you should have, saying something offensive, or embarrassing your mom, ask for forgiveness! Don’t be afraid to get back on the horse again after failure.

Take your medicine. Yes, sometimes the world’s oldest people get there by the miracle of modern medicine and lots of vitamins. As a writer, sometimes you have to take your medicine too. Pay your dues. Put in the time, effort, and work. It will pay off!

Be Romantic: 7 Imaginative Tips for Writing like the Romantic Poets

Romanticism was born in 1799 with the publication of ”Lyrical Ballads,” a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Those dudes could flat out write.

Don’t reduce Romanticism to just love. Love can be romantic, but romance is so much more than just “come on baby, light my fire.” (Yes, it’s true, Jimmy boy was a Romantic, through and through. But that’s a subject for another day.) Romanticism is larger than life—a wistful, world-weary, wise, and wonderful way of looking at ways of looking at things.

So let’s have a look at the 6 main aspects of Romanticism that could inspire your imagination and light your writing fire.

Be a seer, a New Visionary

Easier said than done, but that’s what the Romantics did. They innovated. They broke all the rules.

Write about the commonplace, about the world around you: your hood, your job, your friends, your experiences. Write them new. Say what’s never been said before.

Listen for, as Wordsworth said, “the unheard melodies” of your imagination.

You’ve got words inside you. You just have to listen for them, hear them, and write them.

Be an idealist rather than a materialist

Write stories about people sticking to their ideals and principles.

“The world is too much with us,” said Wordsworth. “Late and soon/ Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;/ Little we see in Nature that is ours;…..”

I’d say there are probably at least 100 stories all around you of people who fit this bill. People wasting their lives “getting and spending.” People lost in material pursuits—empty headed, self-centered , out of touch with what’s really important in life.

By Nature, Wordsworth doesn’t just mean flowers and forests. He means human nature: what we think, feel, understand; how we behave, relate, cope. The basics.

Study and write about the basics. .About “The human heart in conflict with itself,” as Faulkner put it.

It’s a matter of mind over matter

The artist recreates a new reality. Try to rearrange the world. Make your reader see things in a new way.

Take your subject, whatever it is, and look at it upside down and sideways. It’s all just stuff. Throw it up in the air and see where it lands.

Chill and then write

On some days, you’re all fired up or pissed off. Something happened to you that would make a good story.

Chill first. Here’s Wordsworth’s writing method: “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

You felt a strong emotion—fear, anger, embarrassment, despair. You wanted to kill somebody, you were so mad.

Wait until you calm down. Get into a tranquil mood. Then recollect that strong emotion. Bring it back inside your head. Imagine that feeling all over again.

Then write the story that triggered the feeling.

Take a long walk

The Romantics did just about every day.

Seriously. When was the last time you took a long solitary walk? It focuses you, clears your head, helps you introspect.

Take a notepad and pen with you. That’s right. No iPad or laptop. And no texting! No interruptions.

Ideas will come to you. Walking releases imagination. It’s true. Try it.

Just walk and think. When you get ideas, stop and write them down.

Plot around contradictions

People have trouble with contradictions. They usually get all self-righteous and scream: “You’re contradicting yourself!” As if that automatically makes you wrong and them right.

In many cases, the contradictions are great conflicts. Great conflicts are the essence of great plots.

Look for contradictory people, topics, events, experiences. Examine them.

Maybe you’ll discover there’s a logic in the contradictions: the logic of multiple perspectives. Of our inherent confusion over what to think and how to feel.

Contradictions, mixed up people, confused situations—they all make for good characterization and plot elements

Contradictions abound. Life isn’t all unity and harmony.

Grow an organic writing garden

Coleridge had an organic theory of writing: like a seed in the imagination, the idea grows out of itself; self‑originating and self‑organizing.

Start with a seed and just write. See what branches take shape. Let them grow where they go. Let your leaves sprout where they want to. Like a tree, all the branches and leaves of your writing are connected to the whole tree.

Coleridge wrote some crazy good stuff, such as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” about sailors on a ship lost at sea with “water, water every where/ Nor any drop to drink.” And “Kubla Khan”: “His flashing eyes, his floating hair!/ Weave a circle round him thrice,/And close your eyes with holy dread,/For he on honey-dew hath fed/And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

What poetry. Written by an idealistic seer who stirred his imagination on long walks, chillin after bad experiences, and then writing organically about life’s contradictions.

Critical Thinking Part 2: The Inevitability of Subjectivity

It’s best if we admit to ourselves up front that we are bound by what Joseph Conrad calls “the ball and chain of our personality.” We are bound to see things through our own unique lenses, forming our own limited perspectives. Any illusion that we can somehow be completely objective is a dangerous delusion. We must accept our subjectivity—as we accept the grammatical “I” (that subject position from which we syntactically arrange the world)—and realize that our analyses, our critical thinking itself, is bound to be flawed.

If we accept and acknowledge our human fallibility and subjectivity, we’ll become better critical thinkers. By being honest with our audience and ourselves, we’re more on the lookout for flaws in our analysis. AND, we’re triumphing—at least momentarily—over hubris, that deadly sin of pride which clouds our eyes and obscures our vision from any apprehension of “Truth,” with a capital T.

Before we can fully engage our critical thinking skills, it’s important to ground ourselves in self-awareness and a thorough grasp of objectivity and subjectivity. In essence, we attempt to be objective by recognizing and regulating our subjectivity. We must strike a balance between them: being as objective as possible regarding our subjective positions. It is perfectly natural, in other words, for us to be subjective. That’s human nature, as my quoting of Conrad alludes. But scholars learn to discriminate between their subjective opinions and the subjective opinions that others hold. All people, in other words, have their own perspectives.

To be continued…

Critical Thinking Part 1: The Myth of Objectivity

Having been a college professor since 1980, I’ve come to know a few things about the writing and thinking abilities of over 10,000 people. It’s been my experience that the vast majority of those people had not been exposed to much in the way of critical thinking skills before they met me. Incredible! One of the most important survival skills you can have is the ability to cut through the b.s., smokescreens, lies, deceptions, and nonsense in life. To function successfully as a human being, you simply have to develop and employ sound critical thinking skills. And thinking critically involves understanding and appreciating the difference between a) objectivity and subjectivity, b) absolute and relative truth, and c) facts and opinions.

So let’s talk critical thinking and analysis. Analysis is the breaking down of a system into its component parts and the evaluation of how well those parts function, both separately and together. An efficacious analysis of anything—whether it’s a contract, a relationship, a corporation, or a short story—employs and necessitates the critical thinking skills of defining terms (or component parts), gathering and evaluating the evidence, and moving step by step from the suppositions you draw from that evidence, to a tentative thesis and, eventually, to a final thesis and conclusion. The best analysts are the most skilled critical thinkers, and vice versa.

It all begins with objectivity. Easier said than done. That means you’re detached, dispassionate, and unbiased in your perceptions and ideas. Can you or anyone be completely objective? The answer is no. We are all invariably and inevitably shaped and affected by our paradigms: our point-of view, our heredity, environment, socio-economic perspective, life experiences, strengths, weaknesses, and vested interest.

The best we can do is attempt to put our biases aside and look dispassionately at the issue, system, or text that we are analyzing. That’s called Formal Criticism—when we attempt an evaluation of written or spoken words without any of our own feelings or the world’s information to alter what we heard or read and understand. And that’s impossible, isn’t it? Formal Criticism, though it’s perhaps a noble undertaking, is, nonetheless a utopian ideal rarely achieved. Subjective bias is inevitable.

To be continued…

How to Write the Next Spiderman or Harry Potter

So, you want to write genre fiction?

You’ve always loved to read, but your tastes tend toward Clancy or Asimov or Rowling, rather than toward Hemingway, Faulkner, or Melville.

Nothing wrong with that.

But if you want to write in the genres, here are three things that you can do to make sure you have a good shot at getting published.

1. Know the genre inside and out, and don’t repeat what’s already been done, sometimes to death. Nothing will upset a book editor more quickly than seeing a 300-page manuscript that starts off with a young wizard attending Blogwartz. Been there. Done that.

2. Do your research. If you’re writing about, say, space travel, know everything there is to know about the subject before you begin. Genre fiction readers are smart, and so are the book editors. Get your facts right.

3. Show the protagonist at work. You’d be amazed at the number of stories about, say, spies, that cut away just when there is about to be a scene that shows the spy at work. Nothing gives away your lack of knowledge more quickly than not showing the protagonist doing what he or she does.

If you follow these three rules, you’ll be sitting at the head of the class.

–Dr. Doug, www.edit911.com