July 1 is the first anniversary of SRD Editing Services' membership in the Editorial Freelancers Association. In the past year, editor Cortni Merritt has taken some awesome editor training and webinar sessions provided by the EFA, and we wanted to tell you a bit more about what's going on behind-the-scenes and in-front-of-the-screens at SRD Editing [...]
For more than 20 years, the Accelerated Reader (AR) program has been helping kids read children's books they enjoy, at their own pace. Readers of all levels can choose an AR book, read their way through it, then take a computerized quiz to assess their understanding and sometimes earn class credit. Educators across the US [...]
Sometimes, you just want to watch a movie for the fun of it. Sometimes, you want to watch a movie and learn from it. Specifically, if you want to spend some time enhancing your own creative writing skills by watching movies, I think there are a few ways that can be done. Now of course, movies aren't [...]
Random Writer Tools: Fashion in Historical Fiction Writers of historical fiction: rejoice! As a writer, you never know what kind of random tools that you find online will come in handy, and this article from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art ("the Met") is one such example! A team of researchers painstakingly reviewed fashion [...]
I went book shopping yesterday. I don’t know why I picked up anything. I already had 130 books on my TBR list, three of which were recent arrivals via my boyfriend that I wanted to check out. And I already had six or seven that I have been sitting around various places in the house, […]
In my years as a developmental editor, ghostwriter, and book reviewer, I've come across a few tricks to breaking down a good story, and a few tips for assembling one. Maybe you've been told before how to outline your novel or nonfiction book, but hopefully this blog will have some new information for you. In [...]
Ad copy and poetry are about emotion. What's the result? The old tricks work for both.
There's a problem with doing something well: Once is rarely enough. When you do something (like producing quality writing) well, two things can happen: Other people begin to expect more of you, and You begin to expect more of yourself For a writer, this can be great. A well-done piece deserves the admiration it receives, and [...]
Writing emotions is complicated. Do all your characters' emotions make sense? Tips for writing fiction and nonfiction.
Emotion breaks across the page in poetry. I examine how Charles Bukowski hid vulnerability in his strength.