Every author’s process is different, and we’re always interested in hearing about how an author manages to move from an idea to a fully-fledged book. We recently sat down with Spun Yarn author Steve Wechselblatt to talk about the strange journey his mystery novel has taken from genesis to execution.

Before we start to curate an author's Spun Yarn Manuscript Report, we ask how far along they think they are in the editing process, on a scale of 1 - 10. The average score over a hundred manuscripts? 7.3. We also track every manuscript's scores from readers, who are comparing the manuscript they've just to other well-known books in the genre. The average overall score? 6 / 10. There's a gap here. It's grayish, smudgy around the edges, and rrrrrreally annoying to authors.

It’s that time of year again! Time to stress over what to give the writer you’ve already given a zillion writing mugs, notebooks, and tee shirts over the years. This creative list of holiday gifts for writers will score you some major points.

Are your beta readers making myriad small comments, losing the big picture of your story? Here are 5 things we’ve learned from using Flash Feedback as a failsafe way to evaluate your novel’s pacing.

How do you translate your beta readers’ pacing comments into an action plan to revise your novel? In this series we share our learnings from more than a hundred beta readers’ full manuscript comments. In this post we Pacing.

Take our free quiz to see if the book you wrote is any good. We cover plot, characters, themes, reader feedback and more! The Spun Yarn helps authors sort through the daunting process of evaluating your manuscript.