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Meet a New Blogger

JOHN MAY

I spend mornings trading currencies on-line, afternoons working on my medical suspense thriller.

In addition to writing, I enjoy being a student of writing. You either have talent or you don’t, but craft can be taught; and it can be the difference that determines which talented writers are published (or sell a lot if self-published) and get to share their art and which don’t. It always amazes me when I hear some writers say studying craft stifles their creativity. Yes, it’s an art, but it seems to be the only art where practitioners expect to simply start doing it and somehow become expert. True, every few hundred years or so a Mozart level genius in some art is born but I believe the rest of us have to pay our dues.

So, I read a lot of books on the craft of writing. And, a while back, I hired a very good professional editor to line edit a few chapters of an earlier version of my book. I ended up taking the book in a slightly different direction and none of those chapters survived, but the experience was still well worth the effort. While at times painful and humbling, I believe I learned as much from that exercise as I did from all the many craft books I’ve read. Also, after the blood-letting was over, she gave me a document I’ve found invaluable in my self-editing sessions. It’s a multipoint Editor’s Checklist of ways to increase your manuscript’s chance to be published—in essence, a professional editor’s succinct list of to-do’s and not-to-do’s. The edits I describe in my first two blogs come from just a small portion of that Checklist.

I grew up in New Orleans, have an MBA from the University of Houston, and have lived in many parts of the country ranging from Seattle to the Columbia area. My work background is varied also. Among other occupations, I’ve been a hospital administrator, management consultant, and computer software product manager. Two of these occupations required extensive travel and I’ve been to every state in the Union and a host of foreign countries.

My beautiful and wonderfully understanding wife and I currently live in Elgin with our two dogs and my elderly mom who recently came to live with us.