Let’s Talk (Again) About Plagiarism

Me, I’m an editor. And a writer. I’ve been earning a portion of my living as a writer for decades. I’ve been a self-employed editor for more than twelve years. I have a lot of friends who are editors or writers. So when, back in January, Monica Crowley—an author and...

Short Saturday: Don’t Worry about Piracy

Are you worried about someone pirating your work and selling it as his own? Plagiarism exists, for real. But I think this article—a guest post on the brilliant Joanna Penn’s website, The Creative Penn—has a great point: The biggest challenge facing a new author isn’t...

Let Us Now Quote Famous Men

Your Editor spends a lot of time checking facts. Particularly the sorts of facts that can be stated in the form of a question: Really? Are you sure? Did Abraham Lincoln really say that? Because yes, I spend a lot of time researching (ahem) famous quotes. More than I’d...

Short Saturday: Watch Those Quotes!

I recently pushed an author to do better with the epigraphs he was using at the beginning of his chapters. Some I couldn’t verify—although I have a sixth sense about veracity, I’ll give any quote the benefit of the doubt until I prove it false—but a few of them were,...