Ring-Master's Law of Deadlines

When you are on deadline:

1. You will always get sick—usually with something that affects your brain power and/or your ability to speak.
2. At least one child will also get sick, miserable and clingy.
3. None of your sources will be available to talk to you in the few hours that all of your children are at school.
4. Your child will not be able to amuse himself, remain quiet or keep himself out of trouble for the two minutes it takes to double-check something by phone, no matter how content, quiet or out of trouble he was before you picked up the phone.
5. Because of the above, you will be plagued with self-doubt about your writing, editing and time management skills.
6. You will get the assignment done on time anyway and move on to the next one. There are no excuses.

Links Tent: Editing

My apologies for being missing in action over the last couple weeks. I'd tell you that it was due to the fact that the other rings in my life took up my time and left with me none for posting blogs, but I hate excuses and refuse to make them. Instead, I'll tell you I had sick kids, a sick me, a move to complete and NaNoWriMo to catch up on (and, yes, I'm still behind but finishing it is still a possibility).

Louise DeSalvo sums up my logic about not giving you these excuses (ahem) in her guest post on Christina Baker Kline's A Writing Life blog: Why Having Kids is No Excuse. I think this should be required reading for any writer who can't find time to write.

Chuck at the Guide to Literary Agents Blog shares these 7 Reasons Agents Stop Reading Your Chapters. These include some big picture problems that you'll want to take care of.

A. Victoria Mixon has some more big picture advice for you in her post Developmental Editing. She writes a developmental editing letter for an imaginary client, Xavier, who is actually a composite of several real clients and offers suggestions about theme, backstory and characters.

Writing Forward presents 10 Helpful Editing Tips that will work whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, a novel or a business letter.

C. Patrick Schulz focuses on the pesky adverb in his post: Tips on Eliminating Unnecessarily Overused Adverbs. You know you're not supposed to use them!

Finally, Janet Reid, Literary Agent has some sure-fire, undisputable advice for How to get no more rejections, EVER!