shopify analytics ecommerce tracking
Walsh and Bolton Twitter Unconference Advertise Facebook Book Zazzle Search

Dare to Deliver

By

Mise-en-place
Photo by Meal Makeover Moms.

I am a huge fan of restaurants, cooking channels, cookbooks, and chefs.  I’m also an eager reader of business productivity books.  So when I found Work Clean: The Life-Changing Power of Mise-en-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind, by Dan Charnas, I did a little happy dance and snapped it up.

For those of you who aren’t restaurant junkies and who haven’t worked back of the house, “mise-en-place” (or “meeze”) is the prep work and basic routine that chefs use to manage their time, create their meals, and keep the dishes pumping out of the kitchen in a consistent and orderly fashion.

While restaurant food might be art, there’s a definite rigor there, and with good reason: if you mess up an order, or you take too long, people get hangry. Blood sugar drops and tempers flare.

And they’re right in the next room.

And there’s a chance you won’t get paid.

All bad things, all worth taking steps to avoid. If you want to have a Michelin-star quality restaurant, you absolutely need to have your act together.

The chef must deliver.

Personally, I found a lot of gems in this book as far as productivity and mindset (and some great stories about chefs, if you like that sort of thing.)  But this passage in particular struck me like a brick in a sock: [Read more…]

10

Revising Your Manuscript in Scrivener

By

I frequently get asked how to use Scrivener for revisions. Obviously, the specifics will vary depending on your approach to edits, but I’ll cover my basic system and give you some ideas which features you might find helpful. Deciding Where to Revise I make all of the suggested changes from my editor/beta reader/proofreader directly in Scrivener. A second monitor is helpful for referring to their comments, but I no longer have one, so I either divide my screen with the editorial notes … [Read more...]

Lessons From a Revision

By

Which do you enjoy more . . . revising or writing (first-drafting)? Just like the universal plotter vs. pantser question, this is one of the most enduring discussions among writers I know. Maybe you’re in one camp more than the other? Or maybe you’re somewhere in between. Until recently, and without hesitation, I’d have answered I was squarely on Team Writing. But lately I’ve been thinking differently about revision. Not that it’s an either-or versus writing, but that there’s a closer link … [Read more...]

But I Won’t Do That: Sex and Revisions

By

Many years ago, I worked for Planned Parenthood as a sex educator. My primary work was going into the community and talking to people about things we most often think of as sex ed basics: sexually transmitted infections and birth control methods. Those are important issues, but I've always believed that the most valuable thing I taught was negotiation, because one of the more difficult parts about sexuality is getting what you want without being coerced into what you don't want. This is true for … [Read more...]

How to Process and Filter Feedback

By

In my last post I talked about “which types of readers to use for feedback,” covering the pros and cons of a weekly critique group, beta readers, specialty readers, and agents and editors. Knowing where to get feedback on our work is great, but what the heck do you do with it once you have it? It might sound like a straightforward question, but any writer gathering significant feedback knows how daunting it can be to face sorting through and implementing that critique. The good news is that … [Read more...]

4 Ways to Make Notes in Scrivener

By

Do you write sticky notes for revision ideas? Or maybe you add words in caps or use TK to mark spots that need fixed or require additional research. No matter what type of note you want to leave for yourself, Scrivener has an option that makes it easy to mark up your text and find your comments easily when you’re ready to deal with them. Annotations and comments allow you to leave notes at the exact spot that needs attention. Document and project notes give you a broader scope. And, you … [Read more...]

How to Tackle Critique Notes

By

I recently exchanged my manuscript with a writer friend who also had a novel she wanted me to read. We read and edited on paper (we’re old-school that way), so I now have 300+ pages with notes, plus an “editor’s letter” she gave me summarizing her comments. I also just wrapped a big freelance project (a 24-page special section for a trade magazine) for which I served as content editor. This booklet was reviewed by five people who all provided comments via Microsoft Word’s track changes … [Read more...]