#editortips 06.23.12: Retro Tips

Retro editor tips are old #editortips tweets from when I started doing this back in 2011, which no longer show up on the hashtag and are buried way too deep in my tweet history to dig out. I do, however, have some saved in a Word doc from spellchecking before tweeting. They may not be 100% accurate as they were tweeted and I don’t have the links to the tweets, but for lazy weekend blogs they’re close enough. We’ll call it unique blog content and leave it at that. Yep.

@smoulderingsea: Seeing someone do something incorrectly in a published book doesn't give you permission to repeat their mistakes. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: There's a word for "am going to have to." It's "will." Even "should." I'm going to have to start saying I will. I should, right? #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Please keep an eye on your subjects and verbs when the sentence contains multiple actions. I don't think *that* is looking at me. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: I'm going to start a new cause: EACF. Editors Against Courier Font. Pronounced as if trying to eat cotton. EE-ACK-FUH. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Writing good books is not easy. If you think it is, the end result of your efforts likely isn't very good. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Good editors question everything. Great authors work their asses off looking for the perfect answers. #editortips

@smoulderingsea:  Leave certain things to the imagination. What gets you going doesn't work for everyone, and one tiny detail can ruin a scene. #editortips

About #editortips: #editortips is a daily rash of tweets from an only partially crazy editor, chock full of random chocolatey morsels about writing, editing, and querying vaguely disguised as helpful pointers and/or really bad humor. I tweet as @smoulderingsea, and try to post with some consistency every weekday at 6PM CST. Weekends optional, depending on if I’m spending yet another Saturday night editing because my social life consists of Netflix and wondering who in hell thought Nicholas Cage should be typecast as an action hero.