Magical Words: who pays whom?

I’ve been doing what will, I imagine, turn into a four part series over on Magical Words, all prompted by a reader question “who pays whom?” Part one, discussing the editor/agent/author relationship and the differences between an editor and an editorial service, is here. Part two, discussing vanity presses, is here. I expect I’ll be talking about POD and ebooks over the next two weeks, and I’ll link to those later, maybe. For the moment, though, I thought I’d bring up what turned into a very long comment from the…

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writing: show v. tell

I’ve been working on critiques all week. Critiques and I are an interesting clash. I kind of like doing them, but–with exceptions like this, when I’m doing it for the South Carolina Writers’ Workshop at which I’ll be teaching next week–I rarely make time to, even if I say I will. I am not a good critique partner in that sense. At all. And I know it, so I don’t volunteer, or ask people to critique my work, because I know I won’t get around to returning the favor. On…

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why, yes, I am procrastinating

A question from /comments which allows me to spend a little more time not working on the manuscript right now (I’ve done 100 pages so far today. I have to do at least 50 more. Another 100 would be good, because it would leave me with a bearable amount to do tomorrow, but either way I’ll finish the first revision pass tomorrow): Though, now I’m curious — is there an average number of times that a manuscript will pass between your agent, editor and self? I never really thought about…

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