Self-publishers have many hurdles to overcome along the way, but two of the biggest problems are getting the book up to professional writing standards, and attracting the attention of book bloggers. BookVetter is a new site which attempts to address both these issues. For the first, Bookvetter allows writers to post their finished books for review by other authors. Naturally, this isn’t a no-work affair; before you can see reviews of your own work, you have to review other people’s books on a one-for-one basis. Reading and reviewing entire first draft books in order to have your own book reviewed is very time-consuming, so it’s not going to be an option for everyone. If an author already has a tranche of beta readers lined up, then Bookvetter is not going to add much, if anything. However, for anyone who has no reliable source of beta readers, this might be a […]

I recently stumbled across this blogpost by fantasy writer Victoria Grefer, which explains in very logical detail why it’s a bad idea to edit while in the middle of writing the first draft. It makes total sense: the first draft is the time to get stuff down on paper (metaphorically) while not worrying too much about whether it’s tight enough or has the emotional impact you want. The editing phase is the proper time to reread what you wrote and polish it into shape. Write it first, rewrite it later. Good advice. Except that I do the exact opposite. Every day when I settle down for a writing session, I reread what I wrote the day before and – yes, I edit it. I tighten, I smooth, I polish, from the level of removing or rejigging entire paragraphs to changing words here and there and fixing typos. Then, when I […]