Edits!

Just as I got started on Dragons of the Watch, I got the edits for Two Tickets to a Christmas Ball and Dragons of the Valley back from the editor. That means you go line by line and approve or disapprove of changes made. (Usually the changes are minor like caps and punctuation.) and there are some places where you actually re-write a paragraph or sentence for clarity. I always know what I mean, but sometimes the reader doesn't.

Writing tip: Avoid there is, there was, there were at the beginning of a sentence in your narrative. You can let them ride in dialogue, because people talk like that. But outside of dialogue, using there+to be verb is lazy writing.

Most often this blunder occurs in description:

There was a flowerpot teetering on the windowsill .

A flowerpot teetered on the windowsill.

There was a curl dangling over one ear.

A curl dangled over one ear.

There was an old sofa in the room, centered against the opposite wall.

Centered against the opposite wall, a sofa squatted as if it had been mashed into the floor by a hundred elephants.