Writing and Editing

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Wayne talks about the various things you need to do in order to self-publish your book, and also identifies a new player in the overall publishing business: the company specifically designed to provide full service for self-publishing authors.

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Wayne discusses his own practices and those of others in handling "hard material." He goes on to talk about freedom of expression generally in the woke cancel culture that we are unfortunately living in now. (Note: he makes a reference to and also discusses briefly an episode of Bari Weiss's podcast Honestly. You can find that episode here.)

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Wayne discusses mixed metaphors and makes a case for why they should be categorically avoided in your writing. Along the way, he has some comments also about metaphors generally and about clichés.

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Wayne interviews Dr. Kirby Conrod, who is a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Washington. Dr. Conrod’s commentary, especially on what is called “the singular they,” has appeared in many other publications, in print, on the web, and in podcasts.

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Wayne goes through his list of the most important things you should keep in mind when you are choosing an editor.

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Wayne talks about the origin of the semi-colon and makes a case for why it may become extinct on its own, or perhaps should be eliminated anyway;

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Wayne talks about the care that an editor must take when working with the particular writing style of a client. All are different. Hear a little about the Beatles and J. D. Salinger, and Northrop Frye and Neil Young. Something for everyone ...

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Wayne discusses the two opposite poles of editing: attention to minutiae and attention to overall structure.

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Wayne discusses reviews of fiction in the broad sense, focusing on things that reviewers ask that are irrelevant—and suggesting things they could ask about that would be more revelatory about the author and their book.

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Wayne discusses the importance of a type of spareness in writing fiction, and cites a short story by Raymond Carver, novels by Vladimir Nabokov, a song by Leonard Cohen, and two movies (Unforgiveable and Glengarry Glen Ross)—to illustrate his points.