we had a three-bedroom house. we had a school-age child. we had a younger child. we had a newborn. and we had a pregnancy we hadn’t planned for. we had said we’d do four. …

Over the past six years, I have edited roughly 1,500 initial query drafts. In a lot of them, a character, concept or detail is emphasized in the first or second sentence … and then never again. Here’s what I think is happening, then how to fix it. First, what’s happening: …

Last night, Angel Hernandez officiated a baseball game, which is to say that last night, Angel Hernandez ruined a baseball game. But I’m not going to offer the 945,306th article about Kyle Schwarber informing Angel — on behalf of a league of exhausted and irate fans— that he is the…

I am on the record as thinking verbs are the best part of speech. I am equally unfond of nouns that should be verbs, such as destruction, death, dismemberment, happiness and anything to do with sex. …

Prologue In this essay, I will: Defend the holy Prologue against all enemies, foreign and domestic, on ludicrous charges, as outlined above. Cite several examples of superb, necessary and even life-sustaining Prologues. Cement my status as a fan of Prologues by insisting that all submission package materials put before this…

Twitter is a cesspool disguised as a resource. There. Now you know why you smell like shit after spending an hour scrolling through competitively large piles of crap. But what is the nature of that crap? Ah, but that’s why you’re here: the eleven types of it. The n00b The…

BEFORE YOU QUERY: A) Control your queries by not querying assholes/unethical agents. Researching agents isn’t just about finding your dream matchups, your solid matches and your “this would be okay”s. It’s also about finding out who’s an asshole or incompetent — or both. Maybe an agent resigned rather than being…

Last year, I helped 21 writers get at least one pages request. Many of those writers got several requests. One of my earliest paying clients (for her syn) is up to something like five full requests. And speaking of five, that’s the number of writers I helped get agents. How? …