Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • Those sneaky lurking bastards

    Those sneaky lurking bastards

    Typos, I mean. Sheesh. My novel The Booker Rebellion will be released in November. It has been copy edited many times. Seriously. I spent some years as a copy editor at two of the finest papers in the West, The Anchorage Daily News and The Register-Guard in Eugene. This was the era when newspapers still made financial sense and people didn’t think you got factual information for free in your socials. But that’s a rant for another day.

    Before I sent the manuscript out for consideration I hired one of the best copy editors I know to give it a read and she caught tons. Every dumb thing I’d missed. Fast forward a year, and my publisher’s editor, another close-reading kind of genius, went over it again.

    And still. Okay, there may have been some tinkering on my part, a few little fixes to plot and character here and there. I may have introduced an error or two between copy edits. My bad.

    Here’s the thing. A writer wants a reader to fall into the story, to be in among the characters and the place and the what-happens-next. A typo throws them out, dumps them back in the real world. And that is the biggest sin.

    What comes next for my manuscript? Galleys, the version of the book that goes to the printer. Last chance to catch the woolly boogers. They’re like aphids on roses, only you can’t hose them off. This is a hand-picking job.

    I’m ready for ’em. Vats of coffee. Phone off. Cranky, judgy self at the ready.

    I’ll be thinking of my ideal reader when I do this task, imagining the person who will love the story. The last thing I want is that reader flinging the book across the room in a snit because I let my guard down at the end.

    Semper vigilans, baby.

  • Little moments, big feelings

    Hanging out the laundry to dry in the hot sun. That’s a thing a retired woman has time to do. And savor. String out the line, drape the sheets, clip on the wooden clothespins. Listen to the cheeping nuthatches scolding that you’ve interrupted their breakfast. Imagine yourself as a part of a long long line of women caring for the small details of the home.

    Tell you what, though. A few summers ago, I rhapsodized on this subject to my mother. She snorted and rattled off her memories–winter mornings on the prairie in southern Alberta, hanging out the wet clothes, hands red and frigid; or running out in a mean whipping wind, fighting to keep shirts and dresses from flying off, or rescuing nicely dried sheets from a sudden squall.

    Adding her sharp memories to my own odd joy in the task seems right just now. A year ago, I was with her as she was getting ready to leave us. It was lovely. And hard. She was delicate, yet tough as the Alberta roses she adored. And we all miss her.

    Photo by Susan Palmer

  • Only you can write it

    Only you can write it

    If you’re pondering whether to join me for a writing workshop on Saturday in Eugene, here are two things to consider: one alarming, the other magical.

    Because self-publishing is so easy now and because AI makes faking it even easier, the world is flooded every year with new books. In 2025, Publishers Weekly reported 4.2 million books were published. Twenty years ago, the total was 282,500. That’s a 1,387 percent increase. In that time, the US population increased by just 15 percent.

    What can a writer hope to do, faced with that kind of competition?

    We do what we’ve always done. We write anyway.

    Here’s the magical part. Only you can write the stories that are in you. To do that, you need three practices that evolve over a lifetime of writing. You need to know yourself. You need to know what excites your deep curiosity and makes you want to grab a pen. You need to know language.

    On Saturday we’ll play with three techniques that will build your noticing skills across those areas. Why? Because in a world filled with fakes, readers need the story that only you can write.

    Use the link below to register.

    The Practicing Writer