100 sites for fiction writers: #77 - Evil Editor

This is an ongoing series looking at websites that can be of help to fiction writers with their craft and career.

Evil Editor

With a title like Evil Editor, this might seem to be a blog writers would want to stay far away from. But that's not the truth. The truth is the Evil Editor blog can help writers in several ways.

First off, this blog allows writers to send to the editor either a query, a synopsis or the first 200 words of a writer's novel or short story. The editor then reads the submission and writes up comments about the submission. This is all done sort of tongue-in-cheek, and can be harsh at times, but it can also be very instructional to the writer.

Let me add this right here and now. If you are a beginning fiction writer, you need to learn to check your ego. Not every word you write is golden. You don't know everything. You probably don't know as much as you think you do. More than likely most of what you write will be crap. That's the simple truth. You need to deal with it. Only by stuffing down your ego and continuing to write will you actually have any chance of ever getting anything published or building an audience of readers. Becoming a good and/or professional writer takes time, and you have to be willing to put in the work.

Okay, back to the Evil Editor blog. What might be hardest for submitting writers is that the editor of this blog makes his comments public, and allows for the blog's readers to comment. Hilarity often ensues, and sometimes so do hard feelings, but hard feelings never accomplish anything.

Of course submitting writers can also comment themselves, and this can lead to better understanding and better writing if the right approach is used. In general, this website is light hearted, so don't become too worked up if you happen to be the butt of a joke on any given day.

Writers also might find helpful the regular Book Chats.

The blog's writer also has a book store if you want to check out some of his books and DVD, and don't forget to look around for some of the other odds and ends offered at the Evil Editor.