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Polish Your Punctuation and Grammar Skills

One of the biggest problems I see when reading the work of unpublished writers is lack of grammar and punctuation skills. I know this will sound harsh, but I don't understand this when almost everyone has access to spell-checking and grammatical help on the computer. Are some writers just in a hurry? Are they lazy? Do they think no one will notice? They will notice, and that's why you must check over your work again and again.

I am a fast writer, but a writer who constantly edits while writing. Some writers don't believe in that. They like to write their entire piece while they have everything fresh in their mind, then go back and start picking it apart. For me, it's easier to do it as I go along, even though I know it will need more fine-tuning later on. It's just a matter of preference.

Presentation is Paramount

Many years ago, I told my sister that it didn't seem that difficult to get stories published. (At the time, as a new writer, I was writing a lot of romance stories.) I don't think my stories were much different from anyone else's, but I always made sure that the manuscript was about as perfect as it could be before I sent it on its way. I sold a lot of stories, and to this day I believe it was because of my presentation, not the content.

Have you heard of the "slush pile," where most manuscripts end up because of numerous problems? Trust me, no editor will even look further than the first page if you have typos and your formatting is wrong. Avoid the slush pile.

Write Something and Put It away

Give yourself a little distance between you and your writing. Leaving your work alone for a day or two could be one of the most important things you do to be able to view it from a different perspective. You may think you have something terrific on the day you write it, but when you go back to it a few days later, you see glaring errors that you can't believe you overlooked. Wait! That's a good thing and why you want to distance yourself in the first place.

Don't Fall in Love with Your Writing

I was told this by a script-writing teacher several years ago, and he was 100% right. There are writers who will fight to the death (well, maybe not literally) to keep in every word of a piece they've written. They can't bear the idea of their writing being changed by an editor in any way. They will even give up a sale over a paragraph that is begging to be removed.

First of all, it's impractical. We are in this to make

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