Mini-Seminar 1
The Soul of Ghostwriting

It's not like you can infuse your essence into the veins of another writer. How do you make a ghostwriter understand what you are trying to say?

A great ghostwriter is also a great listener.  A great ghostwriter can piece together fragments of a manuscript, bridge them together into the architectural wonder of a book.  Your book.  Whether it's your life story, a white paper, or a business package, a great ghostwriter finds the essence of what you want to say and says it well. That's the soul of ghostwriting. 

Conveying information to a ghostwriter takes open and honest communication about what you want and how you want it presented to your audience. We will work with you from concept to completion, listen to you, ask the right questions, and never lose your voice as the author.

Mini-Seminar 2
Formatting Your Manuscript

One of the cardinal rules every writer should follow before submitting a manuscript to an editor or publisher is to make sure that your manuscript is formatted properly. Submitting a manuscript to an editor without properly formatting is not cost-effective. If an editor accepts an unformatted manuscript, and I don't know many that will, you will be paying for hours of format time. Avoid that expense. Format.

Google manuscript formatting and you will get hundreds, if not thousands, of reputable sites to help you physically format your manuscript. There's even software that will format for you. Great resources, but I am talking about some basic formatting that makes your manuscript crisp and clean for your editor. Like...

• No flush left paragraphs, please. ALWAYS indent for a new paragraph
  
• ALWAYS put quotation marks around dialogue.
• Please number your pages clearly in the header with the name of the manuscript and your surname.
• If you have a textbook or white paper or other document requiring footnotes, please at least attempt to put the footnotes in your preferred APA or MLA style.
• Most editorial submissions are done electronically. However, if you are old style, typing at a pace that allows your muse to be set free, please type on one side only of the paper and take it easy on the white out. Yes, there are many writers out there who still have packages of old onion skin lying around.
  
• Please, please no single spaced manuscripts. Double spacing is preferred by most editors, proofreaders and publishers...which brings me to:

The Grammatical Guru Tip of the Month
When you research, remember the differences among hypotheses, theories and proofs.

Site of the Month

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