Upcoming Fall 2021 Tea Time Talks: Meet our Editors and Authors

Upcoming Fall 2021 Tea Time Talks: Meet our Editors and Authors

Curious about the ins-and-outs of the editorial process? Join us for our Fall 2021 Tea Time Talks  between our authors and editors!
In these short, casual conversations, get a behind-the-scenes look at our publishing process as our Lee & Low editors share a (virtual) cup of tea with their authors. Hear them describe the initial inspiration and the development process, discuss questions that came…

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I know I talk a lot about fiction writing here but I just wanted to say how valuable non-fiction writing is as both education and art. 

Good non-fiction should be entertaining and well written. The amount of time I spent slogging through poorly written academic articles at university taught me that. Most of the time, the articles I found most helpful in my academic work were the ones that I could actually read, where the points were clearly laid out and eloquently expressed. The best articles were the ones that made me want to keep reading, to read more even! To be inspired by and excited by the topic, a topic I hadn’t even thought to care about what I came in. 

Please, please treat academic and educational writing with the same care, passion, and work-ethic that you treat your fiction writing. Academia will be more approachable to the common man if it is well written and entertaining.  

If you are investing your time into making your favourite topic more approachable to the average person: Thank you. It doesn’t matter how niche your topic, how uninterested you might think people are by it. Keep writing because you never know who you might inspire. Be the best gateway into your favourite topic you can be.

There is no need for you to be shitty when critiquing someone else’s work.

Critique is not meant to bring people down

or EPICLY DESTROY THEM by stomping on their sense of self-esteem.

As writers we are not in competition, that is a terrifying concept. Do you have any idea of how many writers there are? I don’t. There are too many and I can’t count that high.

Luckily for me, I am not competing with them.

Why?

Because I am too busy wishing them well and encouraging them.

We are all in this together. That doesn’t mean lie, it means give your feedback honestly but constructively. 

Don’t say

1. This is bad because
2. I don’t like this because
3. People won’t like this because
4. Nobody will want to read this kind of book so you should
5. Why would you tell this story? Why don’t you

Or any other phrase like this. 

This advice is useless and it is not critique, it is just worthless criticism intended to perpetuate your opinions and beliefs onto other writers. 

The first part of critiquing another writers work is to understand what goal they seek to achieve through their writing, only then can you help them in finding how best to achieve their goal. 

We writers are in this together. We all share the same goal: To tell a story we are passionate about and bring our vision to the world. As writers our responsibility is to encourage, support, and inspire each other. 

Remember:

Be Constructive. Be Kind.

Accurate.