How to Cut the Fat Out of Your WIP

When I contracted my novella in January and had to cut 30,000 words off my WIP, I knew it was going to be hard. In fact, I almost bailed on submitting the anthology to Barbour because I knew that would mean cutting more than half of my story. The pain of deleting my brilliant prose [...]

Not Much Harder Than Cutting Off A Leg

Agent Rachelle Gardner has an excellent guest post by editor John Upchurch, who talks about “killing your darlings.” Writers know that this term refers to cutting segments from what you’ve written, even though you may think the words are heartbreakingly brilliant (to borrow a phrase from Randy Ingermanson). Great writers from Anne Lamott to James [...]