R.A. Black's Blog

BIRB – Self-edit and CP Edit

The changes were fairly minimal on both parts, so I’m posting the combined version. My CP suggested making the end a little clearer to show he wasn’t on the boat yet, and I tidied up some word choice to remove repetition and make things clearer. Six months and it was over. The boat – or […]

BIRB – #WriterInMotion

My entry for the 2022 Writer in Motion. See the prompt here: https://writerinmotion.com This is a first draft and I’ll post the revised versions week by week. Six months and it was over. The boat – or was it a ship? Jake would know – bobbed on the waves, still a few miles out. He […]

Query for Til Death Do Us Bard

As there was an overwhelmingly positive response on Twitter, here’s my query that got my agent, Rebecca Podos. Dear [agent name] , A grumpy adventurer must come out of retirement to stop a civil war between magic and undead, even if doing so will lose him the sunshine of his heart. TIL DEATH DO US […]

This is not a Positivity Post

Querying is hard right now. And while I’m over the moon, it wasn’t long ago that I was ready to give up on the idea of ever getting anywhere with my writing. I’ve gone back and read a thread on discord and it’s painfully clear how broken I am about this idea. And I know […]

How to Use Styles to Format your Manuscript

Setting up your manuscript right helps everyone. Many agents will read on a tablet or e-reader, and formatting like tabs, returns etc, can affect how it displays, which makes it harder for them to read. Using styles has the added benefit of being making life very easy for you too. Once done, you need to […]

Getting Ready for #Pitchwars

The last month or so before Pitchwars is always stressful. Putting the time in to make sure your work is a polished as you can, so your story shines through and grips your dream mentor by the throat heart. But once you’ve done that, there are more things that you can do to make sure […]

I’m a #Pitchwars Failure – And Here’s Why I Think You Should do it Anyway

Before I start, failure is my term. It’s never been pushed on me by anyone in Pitchwars and I suspect I’ll get a few pokes from people saying oi, no after reading this. But it is how I feel. Let’s be honest, we push ourselves because we want to achieve. We want to get that […]

What I Learned from #PitchWars – Part 2

This post is mostly aimed at those looking to enter #PitchWars in the future. I’ve mentioned things that struck me on an earlier post, which covered a variety of aspects, but in this one, I want to focus on emotions, feelings, and mental health. I’ll start by saying the experience was amazing, and if you […]

#PitchWars Stats Post

Yesterday at around 10pm I finished the last of my line edits. That’s two rounds of dev edits and one of lines edits down since I got into to #Pitchwars. So, to celebrate, here’s a selection of stats about my manuscript and the event itself. Original word count: 81511 Final new word count: 87938 Number […]

What I’ve Learned from #Pitchwars (…so far)

At the beginning of November to my Slack writing group going wild and found out I’d been selected as a #Pitchwars mentee. (If you’re not familiar with Pitchwars, check out the site here: pitchwars.org) It’s been about three weeks now and I’ve finished my first revision, so here’s a few thoughts on what I’ve learned […]