What you can’t rely on when editing your own writing — Ah, the bane of the writing process— proofreading. You wrote it. Maybe multiple drafts. You edited it. But now you have got to read it again… for typos? Proofreading is probably the least glamorous part of the writing process, but one of the most necessary to complete a polished, professional…

Know what you need to do when — One of the several reasons I had for self-publishing my first book, a collection of creepy short stories, was for the hands-on learning process. I wanted to understand self-publishing better. …

When and why to ask for help — When I was working on self-publishing my first book at the end of last year, I went in with the ambition to do everything myself. I knew it was a lofty goal, but I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to learn. I wanted to see if I was capable…

How to write a summary for a collection — When self-publishing a book, you do not have a publicity department to write your book blurb for you. You have to do it yourself. When publishing a short story collection, you have the additional hurdle of not having to summarize one story, but multiple. This was a struggle I ran…

Best books of the year — I had a hard year in reading. I may have read over 50 books (sorry if this sounds like bragging, but this is actually a bit on the low side for me) but not many caught my imagination or stayed in my mind as special. I couldn’t even make this…

Fanfiction is shaping the fiction landscape whether you like it or not — It should be no surprise to anyone this far into the twenty-first century where nerd, geek, and fan culture have gone more and more mainstream, that fanfiction is a stepping stone in many writers’ and readers’ literary journeys. Yes, many writers who cut their teeth on fanfiction go on to…

Three areas to look out for as you make differing parts into a whole — When polishing any work of writing, you want the content to be consistent. The formatting. The style. The character names spelled the same throughout. You get the picture. Collections of works are no different, but there are different consistency editing considerations to take into account. While a novel, memoir, or…

And how it is different from titling a novel — Coming up with a great title for a piece of writing can be stressful. You want something cool and memorable. Something that accurately fits and represents your story. And something that hasn’t been used before. …

On finding unifying factors, discovering flow, and embracing the cycle — So you are ready to take the next step in your short story writing journey: publishing a short story collection. Whether chapbook or full manuscript, whether self-publishing or sending that manuscript to a publisher, that now means you need to (a) pick which stories to put into the collection and…