#editortips for 09.06.12

@smoulderingsea: Anxious and eager aren't really synonyms. Anxious implies a state of distress, but people often use it as impatiently eager. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Make sure pronouns are consistent with singular and plural. If you say "Mark and Jenny ran," it's "they ran," not "he ran." #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Struggling for something to write about? Look around you. Common experience makes a great foundation for the extraordinary. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Don't accept all writing advice at face value. (Not even mine.) Use common sense, be informed, and educate yourself. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: 95% of publishing facts you learn from writer friends turn out to be either misinterpreted, hyperbole, or just plain untrue. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Many writers never actually write a second draft. They perfunctorily edit the first. Go deeper. Create a new, better draft. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Don't confuse trope and genre. Tropes can persist across genres, and every story has them no matter what genre it fits. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: People also often associate fiction tropes with cliches, and thus avoid them. Tropes are more like foundational plot elements. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Exclamation points in narrative (and dialogue) are the devil, you hear me?! The DEVIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #interrobangstoo #editortips

@smoulderingsea: If you're stuck, write away from stimuli. No TV, no music, no research sources. Just you and the page. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Querying can be frightening, but if you don't do it...why did you devote so much of your life to the manuscript? #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Some are afraid to query and publish because they're afraid of exposure . Don't be. Don't hide a story people want to hear. #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 etching obscure prophecies on the walls in an offshoot dialect of Sanskrit.