Writers on the edge…(Genius)

Yesterday I watched the film Genius, in which Jude Law plays the utterly driven writer Tom Wolfe, and Colin Firth plays the (genius) editor Max Perkins, who also edited Fitzgerald and Hemingway, both portrayed admirably in the film.

I think writers should go watch (or rent) the movie. Here’s why.

Wolfe has been rejected by every publishing house in town, until Max sees something in his work. Most writers, even successful ones, had a rough start, or have not yet even had that ‘lucky break’, which seems lucky when it happens to others, and hard-earned when it finally happens to them.…

Is it worth paying for a copy-edit?

First, I’m an author, not a copy-editor, and I’m not selling any services. For my first four books I didn’t use a copy-edit as it would have cost me around a thousand pounds to do so per book, and I didn’t think it was worth it. Now I have a large publisher behind me, and have just had a copy-edit done for me (for free), I’ve basically changed my mind. 

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