Editorial Inspirations

08/26/2025

Writing Prompt of the Month
Your computer has met an untimely death and you’ve been asked to say a few words in its honor. Write a eulogy for your computer, remembering the good times and the bad.

08/23/2025

On the night of her sixteenth birthday and before her father has the chance to force her to marry a complete stranger, Princess Margaret sneaks away from the riches and safety of the palace. Torn between her fate and freedom, Princess Margaret desperately goes looking for her mother as the answer. In a quest of soul searching and physical hardships, the twist of events may take the readers by surprise, instilling a piece of the story in their hearts.

On the night of her sixteenth birthday and before her father has the chance to force her to marry a complete stranger, Princess Margaret sneaks away from the riches and safety of the palace. Torn between her fate and freedom, Princess Margaret desperately goes looking for her mother as the answer...

08/22/2025

While there are many ways to work with words, no one person knows how to do it all. This second edition of April Michelle Davis’s The Insider’s Guide to Expert Editing is chock-full of insights from experts in the field, with a focus on five manuscript service categories that every editor should consider for their arsenal.

While there are many ways to work with words, no one person knows how to do it all. This second edition of April Michelle Davis’s is chock-full of insights from experts in the field, with a focus on five manuscript service categories that every editor should consider for their arsenal: A d...

08/21/2025

Either is a singular adjective that means one or the other but not both. Either represents one noun or pronoun doing one thing and the other noun or pronoun doing another. This makes either positive because what is occurring is true. Because it is positive, either can be paired with or but not with the negative word nor.

Example: He wanted to draw either in charcoal or in colored pencil. (He wanted to draw with one or the other, not both, so either is used correctly here.)

In addition to an either needing an or, the phrase that comes after the either must be parallel to what comes after the or. Therefore, the following example is incorrect:

Example: He wanted to draw either in charcoal or colored pencil.

A preposition comes immediately after either, so a preposition needs to immediately follow or. However, instead there is an adjective, making the sentence not parallel and grammatically incorrect.

When constructing either/or sentences, it is important to have subject/verb agreement. Often writers have the wrong agreement because the sentence sounds right when they read it, but in fact the sentence is not proper English.

Example: I think either this dress or that one look best on you. (Although this sentence seems right when you read it, it should actually be as follows: I think either this dress or that one looks best on you.)

If the noun that comes after the or is singular, then the verb should be singular. If the noun that comes after the or is plural, then the verb should be plural. In other words, subject/verb agreement is between the noun closest to the verb and the verb.

Example: Either mice or a rat eats food in our pantry. (Mice is plural, but it does not affect the verb. Rat is singular, so the verb must be singular. However, many people would say that the sentence, though grammatically correct, sounds weird. An easy fix is to flip the two choices and make the verb plural: Either a rat or mice are in our pantry.)

08/20/2025

“I know a lot of kids who want to grow up to play shortstop for the Yankees, but this may well be the first case of a shortstop for the Yankees wanting to grow up to be in publishing – which makes it a fine day indeed for publishers.”

—Jon Meacham, executive editor at Random House, in New York magazine’s piece headlined “5 Tips for Derek Jeter on Book-Publishing”

08/15/2025

August 6, 1809 – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s birthday. Tennyson is the author of Lady of Shalott. “Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.”

08/14/2025

Combining close textual readings with a broad theoretical perspective, Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel is a study of the ways in which gender shapes the principal characters and narratives of seven important Italian novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (1827) to Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli (1982).

Silvia Valisa’s innovative approach focuses on the tensions between the characters and the gender ideologies that surround them, and the ways in which this dissonance exposes the ideological and epistemological structures of the modern novel. A provocative account of the intersection between gender, narrative, and epistemology that draws on the work of Georg Lukács, Barbara Spackman, and Teresa de Lauretis, this volume offers an intriguing new approach to investigating the nature of fiction.

April Michelle Davis, a professional indexer, spent several weeks writing the index for this book. She read the text, examining every theme, idea, and topic in each chapter, on each page to determine what should be included in the index and how best to represent those terms in the index in a user-friendly method for the reader, and to meet the author's expectation for the length of the index.

08/13/2025

How do I deal with writer’s block? By thinking out of the box and letting my creative side run wild and not being afraid or hesitant to grasp experiences, such as family and friend activities and seasonality changes, and turn them into writable opportunities. Simply taking my children to a birthday party where I might observe them as I sit and wait for them, I may actively listen to the conversations of the children and get lost in their thought processes until I am keenly aware of ideas for a story. The change of seasons sparks my creative juices. These incidences generate nuggets of concepts that jump start and stimulate my thought processes for writing a new story, furthering the development of new characters, new scenes and settings, and new story lines playing out in my brain. The more experiences I have in life with my husband, my children, and the environment, the more ideas pop into my head for new stories.

So how do I put these new ideas into action? There are several ways, and some of my favorites include the following: Before falling to sleep, I ponder them to spark a dream to bring the ideas to life. Or I might go to my quiet place with a cup of tea to brainstorm and write random thoughts related or not related to my ideas to give them a burst of life. Or I take a few moments to revisit the ideas before doing some routine cleaning such as vacuuming or dusting so I can unconsciously float the ideas around in my mind.

08/06/2025

On the night of her sixteenth birthday and before her father has the chance to force her to marry a complete stranger, Princess Margaret sneaks away from the riches and safety of the palace. Torn between her fate and freedom, Princess Margaret desperately goes looking for her mother as the answer. In a quest of soul searching and physical hardships, the twist of events may take the readers by surprise, instilling a piece of the story in their hearts.

On the night of her sixteenth birthday and before her father has the chance to force her to marry a complete stranger, Princess Margaret sneaks away from the riches and safety of the palace. Torn between her fate and freedom, Princess Margaret desperately goes looking for her mother as the answer...

08/04/2025

Block No More, Index Styles, Verb Orders -

How do I deal with writer’s block? By thinking out of the box and letting my creative side run wild and not being afraid or hesitant to grasp experiences, such as family and friend activities and seasonality changes, and turn them into writable opportunities. Simply taking my children to a birthda...

08/01/2025

If a stranger walked up and asked you to recommend a book, any book, that you thought they should read, which book would it be? Why?

07/31/2025

July 31, 1965 – J. K. Rowling’s birthday. Rowling is the author of Harry Potter. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”