The Publishing Performance Show

Dave King – Self-Editing Techniques Every Fiction Writer Must Know Before Publishing

• Teddy Smith • Episode 141

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Dave King is a professional fiction editor with over 35 years of experience and co-author of the bestselling writing manual Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, which has sold over 200,000 copies and been adopted as a textbook worldwide. With translations into Italian, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Korean, the book maintains its position in Amazon's top 10 fiction writing manuals. Dave apprenticed under Renni Browne, a former editor for William Morrow and Stein and Day, learning the craft through hands-on manuscript work. Today, he helps authors at all levels refine their manuscripts through his unique 50-page collaborative editing process that trains writers to become their own best editors.


In this episode:

  • 30-year backlist bestseller adopted as textbook, 6,000-7,000 copies annually
  • Philosophy degree to glass grinding plant to professional editor
  • Apprenticeship as the only way to learn editing
  • 50-page back-and-forth collaborative editing technique
  • Copy editing vs. mechanical vs. creative editing
  • Point of view as the #1 issue in manuscripts
  • The cottage cheese test for character perspective
  • The dialogue voice test for distinct character voices
  • Why writers as beta readers can be dangerous
  • Diagnostic reading report at $2 per page before detailed editing
  • More forgiving of narrative summary in sci-fi and historical fiction
  • How J.K. Rowling broke all the rules but created effective world-building
  • Real editing transformation: changing the ending with the supportive boss
  • Finish your manuscript before hiring an editor
  • ING phrases and subordinate clauses that weaken writing
  • Multiple beta readers agreeing means pay attention
  • Fourth-Ringing Tonguishness: Anglo-Saxon vs. Latinate words
  • Hitting manuscripts with fresh eyes like a reader would


Resources mentioned:

  • Writer Unboxed: Archive of Dave King's editing articles
  • Notable article: "Fourth-Ringing Tonguishness" (on Anglo-Saxon vs. Latinate language)
  • Paul Anderson's analog magazine essay (1980s) on translating atomic physics into Anglo-Saxon equivalents


Book Recommendations:

  • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060545690?&linkCode=ll1&tag=pubperf-20&linkId=400c65572fa1761b41f901ed6233057c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl


Connect with Dave King:

  • Website: www.davekingedits.com
  • Editing services and consultation information available on website
  • Article archive with topical index available under "Advice" section
  • Diagnostic reading reports: $2 per page (250 words per page)


Connect with Teddy Smith:

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Teddy Smith (00:05)
Welcome to the Publishing Performance Show, the podcast that helps self-published authors turn their passion into a profit. Now I'm your host Teddy Smith, and if you're serious about building a sustainable business, then you're in the right place. Every week I sit down with successful authors, industry experts, and publishing professionals who share their exact strategies they use right now to how they've grown their business, grow their readership, increase their book sales, and essentially to make a bit more money. Now, whether you're just starting out or you're looking to scale your existing publishing business,

walk away from every episode with actionable insights you can implement immediately. Now, if you're new here, it would really, really help me out if you could subscribe either on Apple or Spotify or YouTube or wherever you are, just simply hit the subscribe button. It really helps the show to get more reach, which means we can get better guests for you and we can help you out in more ways. All right, let's dive into this episode. Hi everyone and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today I'm really happy to be joined by Dave King.

who is the writer of self-editing for fiction writers, which sold over 200,000 copies and has been translated into over four languages. So thank you for joining us, Dave. Well, I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be here. So you've sold 200,000 copies of your book. That's amazing. Tell us a bit about that book and how it came about. Curious enough, it's been adopted as a textbook, which is eternal life for a book. And it has only sold six or 7,000 copies a year.

but has done it for 30 years and it's crossed 200,000 copies. It's been translated into Italian, Taiwanese. There are currently deals in the works to have it translated into Japanese and Korean. There was for a time talk of having it translated into Mandarin for sale in mainland China, but that fell through as politics got complicated with China. It just keeps on giving, it keeps going. It's in its second edition.

It's amazing. It's over, you know, around 200 copies a month or something. And that's something you've written a long time ago. It just shows you the power of books to keep going. It's usually in the top 10 of fiction writing manuals on Amazon and usually in the top couple thousand among books in general. It's, it's a steady seller. It's a backlist book. Yep. And what, what made you write in the first place? Ah, that's a story. I was.

In 1987, I was renting a room from Renny Brown, who ran the editorial department. She had been a former editor for William Morrow and Saul Stein, Stein and Day, and she started her own company. She did not read science fiction. I did. She gave me a science fiction manuscript to read just to see if it was readable, to see if the author had anything. I wrote three pages, single-spaced, on how the author

could improve his plot, she began apprenticing me as an editor. Apprenticing is still the only way to learn editing. Five years later, she decided to write self-editing for fiction writers, which was an expansion of a workshop she was giving at the time that was the most common advice that beginning writers needed to hear. And she invited me in to be part of it. And between us, we wrote the book.

⁓ first published in 1992 and has been gone stronger ever since. So is your background in editing or was there something that led you to doing that in the first place? I was trying to write. No, my background is varied. I actually have a, I actually have a degree in philosophy, a bachelor's degree in philosophy. I worked my way through college in a glass grinding plant. I was working at a geology lab.

when Reni hired me taking courses in computer programming at Columbia University. It was the Columbia's geology lab. And as I say, I was writing science fiction, which is why she gave me the piece in the first place. But no, I have had a long, strange, employment history. It's nothing that any guidance counselor in high school would ever tell anyone to pursue. And as I say, the only way to learn editing is by apprenticeship. And I apprenticed under

An editor who already then had 30 years of experience. So that's how I got started. And did you have a first book which you edited first? Do you remember which one it was? Uh, no. Um, I remember some of the early books I edited. Some of them still stuck with me, which is a sign of their power. Um, but no, the way, the way you learn editing, Rennie would give me a few pages to edit and I would edit them.

And then she would come after me and edit the stuff that I had already edited and point out, you know, where I'd missed stuff, where I'd gone too far, where I'd changed what the author intended to do.

And that's, I actually use that technique with my clients. The way I edit the manuscript is I take it 50 pages at a time. I'll edit 50 pages. I'll send them a clean copy and then invite them to edit the next 50 pages and send me a clean copy of that. And then I edit what they've already edited. And by working back and forth like this, eventually I'm apprenticing them to become their own editors. And that's, I found that it's immensely useful

learning technique. Usually I often work with clients over the course of four or five different manuscripts and usually they get down all of the stuff that's in self editing, all of the mechanical stuff about point of view, about showing and telling about handling interior monologue. They get that with the first manuscript. And after that, we're just working on the creative stuff. So it's, it's a very effective learning tool. Hmm. What's interesting is I, I could never be an editor. I'm

really bad at spelling and I'm, you know, I don't pick up on the things that really, uh, good people who are good at this attention to detail thing pick up. I just completely read past it. You know, I've read books before where there's been mistakes in them and I've just completely glossed over and people have said, Oh, what's good? Why is that there? Um, that was one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you because, you know, editing obviously costs money and people will like want to, um, especially if they're self published. know, they, they are working on a budget and doing everything themselves.

So your book's about self-editing for fiction writers. So what does that process look like for self-editing? Let's just start from like the beginning of that process. Well, actually I am in the same position you are as far as I don't believe you, I think you're lying. I consider what you're referring to there as copy editing, where you deal with correct usage, where you deal with mistakes, where you deal with continuity of things that get missed. I catch those where I can, but

In order to be a good copy editor, you have to have an obsessive love of correct usage. Yep. And that screws up an ear for good dialogue because good dialogue is often not correct, but it's character authentic. And, ⁓ that's the kind of editing I do as to techniques. There's it really is custom work every.

Every writer is different and every writer has different techniques and different ways to approach them. A couple of journal principles, set it aside for a while, look at it with fresh eyes, put it in a drawer for a month, and then look at it again. a lot of the mechanical stuff is just a matter of getting it into your muscle memory. So you stop using a lot of L Y adverbs. So you stop putting important action in sub, you know, subordinate clauses.

⁓ but other than that.

One of the reasons, if I could promote myself a little bit here, one of the reasons to hire an independent editor is that independent editors see all sorts of different techniques. I see writers who are trying to do all sorts of different things and all sorts of different ways. And I've been learning this for the last 40 years almost. So I can see what you're trying to do and help you get there better. Even the, you know, and

an individualized specific way. One of the disadvantages of using nothing personal of using writers as beta readers is that writers usually want to write the kind of books that they know how to write. And they read your manuscript and they tell you how to write the book the way they would have written it. An editor with a wider range of experience and a deeper grounding and all sorts of different techniques can help you write the book the way you want to write it. Right. But in terms of general technique,

There really isn't a lot. It's all individual. Um, when I, when I went to a lot of interviews with like famous authors, know, people like J.K. Rowling and people like that, you very famous authors, they talk about working with the editor, like as they're writing the book. like an ongoing basis, what do you think about that technique? If you have an editor who already knows your basic style and technique, um, if that can work, if I'm

dealing with a new client, someone that I've never read before, I prefer to look at the whole manuscript all at once without any preconceptions. I actually ask clients not to tell me about their books when they come to hire me, not to tell me about themselves. I want to hit their manuscript with fresh eyes the way a reader would knowing nothing about it ahead of time. I find to get a more accurate sense of what the book is like that way. And ⁓ in terms of technique, I understand that J.K. Rowling is an obsessive

Outliner she has outlined. has character things. Rex Stout, was another writer. I admire wrote one draft of everything. He sat down at the, at the, uh, typewriter. had no idea where it was going. He wrote one draft straight through either of those techniques have produced really terrific books. There's, there's no right way to do this. I think I said in, in, in one of the articles once I often get Peter, um,

people want me to edit a partial manuscript to find out that they got off the rails. They lay the rails as they go. You know, I can't, I can't tell if the manuscript is working because I don't know what the end point is supposed to be. So, that affects how you should you be bringing in a professional editor in because it sounds like obviously people got different techniques. J.K. Rowling is an extreme plotter. The other rights you mentioned. So I didn't know that person, but they just write and then just leave it to happen. So.

What, what stage for someone who is maybe just not as, you know, as experienced as someone like JK Rowling, at what stage should they be bringing in an editor? As I said, I do like to work with finished manuscript with somebody. So I'd say finish it first, even if you're confident there's something wrong in it, wrong with it. You don't have to polish it obsessively before you send it to an editor because one of the gifts of editing is being able to see what the writer is trying to do.

And the fact is the sorts of things that are correct, the sorts of things that I help with most are things that the writer cannot see for themselves because they're just too close to it. So send it to me, even if you're not confident, it's as good as it can be because I can see what it can be and help you get there. Probably in ways that you weren't aware of. that draft needs to be in a pretty much a final state, you think, as in the writer needs to have written the book, however many, 60, 100,000 words, something like that, and then give it to you. And that's the point where you'd say.

Yes, yes, exactly. And in your books, obviously you talk about self editing. So what are those techniques that you teach to writers so they can do it themselves rather than going to an editor? The chapters, there's 12 chapters in self editing and the 12 general techniques are mostly mechanical things. They're things like handling your dialogue mechanics.

How often you use the word said, what verbs you should use, handling interior monologue, when and where you should italicize it and separate it from the narrative voice and when you should have the two of them blend together. It's a lot of basic mechanical things about writing that writers need to know in order to look professional, especially beginning writers. But they are the sorts of things that you can see for yourself. I you can go through your manuscript and do a search for how many times you use unusual verbs of speech, for instance, or L-Y adverbs.

And you can find and correct those things.

The sorts of things that self-editing teaches you are largely mechanical. It's how you handle your verbs of speech. It's how you handle interior monologue, when to italicize it, when to use, thinker attributions like he thought, she thought,

There are things that you can teach yourself to use. are things that you can spot mechanically going through your manuscript. can just pay attention to how many L-Y adverbs you use, how many ING phrases you use that move important action into subordinate clauses and kind of weaken the writing. They are things that you can do for yourself. The sort of editing that I do in the business is the more creative end where

There are things that the writers can't see for themselves because they're too close to it, but self editing. In fact, I'd recommend that writers read self editing before they start writing. I've had some fans of the book tell me that they read it every couple of years just to keep up on this sort of thing. But yeah, it's a good, good grounding in the mechanics of writing. Yeah. Are there any common mistakes do you see writers making when, they write their manuscripts?

You mentioned one about giving the put in lots of the L Y adverbs in there. So that's I'm, I'm really guilty of that. I always say I'm really good or, know, it's, I love saying the word really, cause I think it's quite funny, but you know, in writing you see it quite a lot. but yes, so, so apart from that, are there any other common mistakes that you see writers make, especially, know, I'm thinking about more first time writers maybe, but I think the thing that I correct writers most it is in the book is.

point of view. Many writers tend to get so involved with the story unfolding that they forget to track how their characters are reacting within a scene. There's not enough interior monologue. There is not enough shaping of the language to reflect the character's point of view. This is actually something I think a lot of writers may not think about.

The words your character chooses to use reflect their history, reflects their interests at the moment, it reflects their character. And a lot of the writers tend to fall into using the kinds of words that they would use rather than the words that their characters would use. There are a couple ways, there are a couple simple mechanical techniques you can do to avoid this. One is to take a key scene, write it from the point of view of a different character.

It should feel different. know, different details will be noticed. One of the best examples came up years ago. I think it's actually in the first edition of self editing for fiction writers. was a woman who is in having dinner. having lunch in the diner, the stranger, and she noticed that she ate the stranger, ate our French fries, but left her little scoop of cottage cheese untouched. And that tells you about the stranger. It tells you about the person who.

ignored the kind of cheese. also tells you about the narrator who noticed it. It's the sort of thing that she, you know, would tend to notice. And that tells you something about her character. I think that's something that's, it, you know, eventually comes to writers, but it comes later and it will help if you start paying attention to it earlier. One of the interesting things I interviewed Becca Puglisi.

yesterday who wrote the writers, ⁓ the, the emotions, the source is basically a source for writers who are looking for building out emotions in cancers. And she's got loads of other books in about building rounded characters, you know, about building fears, about building contradictions, things like that. Really interesting person to speak to. ⁓ but when she's talking about building those rounded characters, lots of it was about working out exactly what those cancers wants.

Like how they would react to certain situations about how they would speak. So it sounds like that's the sort of thing that you would pick up that maybe, you know, say for example, some writing is either out of character or maybe starting to sound a bit in neutral. That's the sort of thing you'd pick up as well. Well, that's, that's the danger when all of your characters start sounding alike. Yeah. Another technique that I ⁓ recommend sometimes is take all the dialogue that one character speaks, put it together in a file, then do the same thing for another major character.

Read them both all the way through, ignoring the plot, ignoring the story. Just look at the voice. The voices should be distinct. You should be able to tell the difference between the two characters just based on what they say. And if they're not, put in some more thought about who they are, get to know them better. Yeah. So just thinking back about the different writers, know, obviously J.K. Rowling has that huge plotting and the amount of work she puts into the different characters. Is there any work that you think people should do about

in their characters, Germany techniques for building those different characters out. Other than the ones I mentioned, again, they're all different. Every writer is different. This is how JK Rowling gets to know her characters. I've known writers who have just launched and started writing because they already had such a feel for their characters that they were able to inhabit the characters and just follow their stories without any forethought. They're all different.

Every writer is different in the way they approach things. Yeah. So once a writer has finished their manuscripts and they're handing it to you to start that editing process, what does that, what does that editing and feedback process look like when you're working with a customer? First step is always what I call a diagnostic reading report. I just, I can't do any editing until I know the whole story. And if I'm asking writers to invest money in more detailed editing,

They deserve to know what I think of it. Cause I'm, I'm not perfect. God knows. I've, I've found it in, in the healthiest editor writer relationships, the writers take about 70 % of my suggestions and often I'll suggest something and they'll go way beyond it. And that's even better. But I'm not in trouble. So they should know what I think of their manuscript and before they invest anything else. So I start with the diagnostic reading report.

I don't know how commercial you want to get here. That's $2 a page figuring 250 words to a page. Um, after that, it's whatever they need. Um, the diagnostic reading reports are often detailed enough that they want to rewrite a draft on the strength of it and send it a new draft. Usually in the end, we begin the line editing process where actually it used to be pencil on paper. Now it's largely, um, words.

track changes, utility. But I actually start making the changes to voice and dialogue and things on a very, very specific basis. I've got some samples of line editing up on my website if anyone wants to see. And this is where I start working 50 pages at a time. Like I say, I edit 50 page, the first 50, send it to them. The client puts in my changes.

keeps the one to say, ignore the rest. Then they edit the next 50 pages and send me a clean copy. And then I edit what they've already edited and they get a chance to see what they've changed that I've changed back or what they may have missed. And by working back and forth like that throughout the manuscript, it's a real learning process. It's almost like having, you know, an NFW seminar, a fine writing seminar.

on your manuscript alone.

Also, another advantage of the back and forth is I get to tailor my editing to what they want to do. Now I see what I've changed and they haven't. And eventually we get much closer on our vision of the book, usually by the ending. It's a very effective technique. Anyway, that's what it looks like. your way of editing change at all when you work with different genres or niches? Not so much with different genres, no.

Actually, no, story is story. I find myself doing the same sorts of things, whether it's a young adult or a thriller or science fiction. Yeah. So it's really in-depth process. It really is a bit of a back and forth between the two of you. I would say I'm usually a little bit more forgiving of narrative summary and giving background while I'm dealing with something historical, especially about an obscure historical era.

Or science fiction, because you got to build your world. So I bring world building techniques into science fiction and thrillers, know, metaphysical thrillers, know, vampire books and, historicals in a way that I wouldn't in contemporary fiction. Other than that, probably not. When you say you're forgiving of it, you mean that when people are writing like sci-fi or like space opera type things, you know, where it's, you need to build the world.

What, what do allow then that, you know, on a normal book you'd think would be maybe a bit too much. Well, it, still has to be transparent. Readers don't have to feel like they're getting a lectured about the world that they should be taking notes before they start reading the book. characters are shown their daily lives in more detail. You know, the steps they have to take to fire up the spaceship that you would not show someone starting a car.

some of the odds.

attitudes. You know, the opening of a historical fiction might be a situation that highlights the attitudes of the era in a way that you wouldn't have to do with a modern story, that sort of thing. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. Everything you keep saying, I keep thinking about books I've read and like how they've done that. Just then when you're about historical books, I was thinking about the Robert Harris' history books where, know, in the first opening chapter, they're talking about

You know, the relationship between the master and the slave. And I guess that is like how he's opening that relationship up to make you think that's what's going to be the rest of the book. Like, actually, if we can go back to JK Rowling for a second, I actually wrote an article on this and it's on my website somewhere. I forget the title I used for it, but.

Her hook in Sorcerer's Stone, Philosopher's Stone, I guess it is in Britain. She breaks all the rules. It's omniscient narrator. It's narrative summary. lot of it. And yet by introducing the Dursley family first over on Privet Drive as being pathologically normal. having all of this strange stuff going on in the background, she's introducing you to her world.

Her world where this magic often whimsical magic exists and no one's aware of it. Essentially she's, she's like I say, she's breaking all the rules for good hook, but she does very effective world creating just in the first few pages, you know, with the cat who can apparently read street signs before Haggard arrives on the flying motorcycle. It's. It's very effectively done. That's a good example. Yeah. Yeah.

I talk about it lot because it's my favorite books, but it's always different. It's always different to how everyone else has done it, which I always find so interesting. Well, I mean, this has been absolutely fascinating. mean, so could you give us a couple of examples of some of the people or types of books you've worked with and how the editing process has changed throughout you writing the book, throughout you editing the book? well, actually I can off the top of my head because they're very specific.

You know, it's just, I've noticed subtle,

differences in emphasis in how different characters react. I've never had any glaring changes made because we usually work those out before the editing process begins. That's what the diagnostic reading report is for. And yeah, I have had some clients say, no, I'm not trying to do that. I want to do this. And then I tailor my editing so that they can do that effectively.

Yeah, I can't go into details because I don't have the client's permission and you know, I never say anything without permission, but I did just edit a novel in which the main character

I'm trying to think of how I can say this without revealing too much. She changes her profession at the end in a way that fits something she's always wanted to do throughout the manuscript. But she does it without her boss's knowledge and her boss has been supportive of her. recognizes her talent. He's been able to use it. I changed the ending so that her boss throws her out of the job because he can see that she's better than the job is.

And he's the one who gets her the new job. that was a fairly.

Substantive change that I made. was, it was based on threads that the author had already laid into the book. They were all already there. I just pulled them together at the end and she didn't see them because she's too close to the book. This is why you hire an outside editor. And she was ecstatic about the changes that I made. Yeah. There are my one, I actually had one of the best compliments I've ever gotten from a client was.

The fellow who wrote me and said, until I read your diagnostic reading report, I did not know what my book was about. Wow. Yeah. Do you ever have any, like a journey advice for people who are maybe just first starting to work with an editor and you know, they're hearing some of this feedback, which may be quite painful to hear sometimes, you know, if it's quite negative or if it's one, how'd you work with.

What's some advice for people to work with who may be giving them advice they don't want to hear? I have had clients who have taken none of my advice, but only one or two in the last 33 years.

Part of what I do is to try and help writers see what they're missing. It doesn't always happen. And I sometimes get some pushback, but what I'm looking for is for the client to read the report or see the other thing on the page and say, yeah, that's what I was trying to do. That's it. And I hope I'm going to be inspiring rather than soul crushing.

Um, I always, I do always try to be gentle. I do always try to focus on missed opportunities and strengths that the client may not have been able to see. I've actually had some clients, you know, come to me thinking their manuscript was awful. They just felt there was something wrong with it. They couldn't find out what it is. And, you know, I got into it and said, yeah, you know, you cut the first two chapters with chapter five to the beginning. It gets into it better. And they're like, Oh, they actually.

feel better about their manuscripts having read my editing. At least, like I say, that's what I aim for. Don't always get there, but that's what I aim for. Yeah. That's really good advice. I mean, the last question I want to ask was, you know, a lot of the writers who I speak to are self-published and they may be, maybe their first book and they don't have enough budget to get a professional editor for their very first book. Is there any, what would be like the one piece of advice you could give them if they were going to edit the book themselves? Well, besides

self-editing for fiction writers. I would say get fresh eyes on it somehow either as I say, put it in a drawer for a month, look at it again, or have a beta reader you trust. Look it over. mean, there are some beta readers who beta readers have dangers. Like I say, most of them are writers. Some of them try and tell you to write the book they want to write, but

A lot of them do give good advice. And if you have several beta readers and they all start saying the same thing, look at that. You know, that's probably a good sign. If you get rejection letters and the rejection letters are all saying the same thing, look at that. You know, when, when all of your readers start lining up a bunch of something, it's probably real. It's probably not just a matter of taste on their part. Yeah, that's really good advice. Well, this has been fantastic talking to you. Um, I know you've written.

hundreds of articles about editing and you've got your editing website and you've got your book of course. So why don't you give us a bit of information about how we can read your articles and how we can get in contact. The articles are on our website www.davekingedits.com. Excuse me. Okay, we're going to edit this out too. I'm sitting next to the phone. I have an editor.

I don't know if this happens in Portugal, but we get spam calls all the time. We get at least five or six calls a week from someone trying to sell us solar power. We get calls, I get calls all the time about, you know, people willing to loan me $10,000 to support my business or help me find employees. I've unplugged my house phone, so I don't get it quite as much.

And they usually hang up when the answering machine comes on. Okay. Anyway, where was I? Where people can get in touch and read your articles. yes. Well, writer unboxed has a, an archive. It's a little hard to get through. It's chronological and you have to dig back. I have a topical index on my website, www.davekingedits.com.

There's just a pull. There's a button at the top called advice. You click on that and you get into the topical index and

Yeah, that's where I have them. I also, whenever I write an article and I'm referring to something that I've written about before, I try to link back to it so you can often get into one of these articles and follow the chain back through other articles and get the whole background and follow the same topic all the way through.

There are a couple of favorites. One of them is called fourth ringing tongue ishness. Fourth ringing tongue ishness. Fourth ringing tongue ishness. It's that sentence needs editing. It's an explanation of, it's an exploration of the difference between using Latin based words and Anglo-Saxon based words in your writing.

And it goes back to a famous essay written in analog magazine back in the eighties by Paul Anderson, where he took standard high school atomic physics and translated all the terms into their Anglo-Saxon equivalents. And it is literally identical content. And the feel of the thing is completely different.

And that I read that when it first came out and it stuck with me so long that I pulled it out and I used it for this article. And it's great fun. Fourth ringing tongue-ishness. That's fascinating. That's a bit like that. Which by the way is, is the translation for expressive language. right. Okay. That's, it's a bit like that. you know, the Winston Churchill speech, we will never surrender. Like every word of that use just Anglo-Saxon words apart from word surrender at the end. it's, it's, there's an example I use. ⁓

If you say someone is a, ⁓ corporate phages, descendant of a female canine, just lacks spunk. actually. Yeah. Okay. We won't get into the, one of the comments when I publish this on writer unboxed someone, someone asked about something and I was reminded that the term for the, the name of the street in medieval England, where the stews were.

was generally rope hunt lane. And that's, that's the kind of expressive does anyway, perhaps we shouldn't use that. Perhaps we should cut that out. Perfect. Well, and also if people want to buy your book about self-hobbyism, where's the, where's the best place to go and get that.

⁓ Amazon, I think it's also available in Barnes and Noble. A lot of college, as I say, it's, it's often one of the texts used in freshman college English. can most college bookstores, think, carry it.

Um, but yeah, I would go with Amazon. Fine. Great. Well, it's been fascinating talking to you. I'm looking forward to seeing the next articles from you and thanks for coming on. We'll speak soon. It has, it has been all sorts of fun. I'm glad to be here. Take care. Force-fright-tonguishness is a new phrase I've learned, so I'm looking forward to seeing that. See you later. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Publishing Informant Show. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring.

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