I wouldn’t typically highlight the books of one publisher with whom I work, but over time it’s become clear to me that the books published by Savas Beatie really stand out. Publishing is a very expensive, low profit, and highly pressurized industry these days. I am privileged to work with any number of very high-quality publishers, including leading university presses such as the University of Virginia Press and Princeton University Press. No one puts out a better book at the price point than Savas Beatie does. (There are economic and intellectual reasons why academic presses price their books the way they do, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

​I am privileged to work on dozens of fascinating manuscripts every year (check out my editing portfolio here!), but last year something particularly noteworthy and unusual came across my desk. A retired CIA agent and overseas operative named Victor Motier asked for help with a memoir. Victor is not a writer by trade, though that is one of the few professions that he has not undertaken in his more than twenty-year career inside the agency. He has served all over the world, including on the front lines of the Global War on Terror (GWOT). What he produced is absorbing, exciting, and harrowing in ways I did not expect.

Most writers are aware to avoid cliches, which in nonfiction writing often appear in the form of metaphor: blind eyes, cold shoulders, hearts of stone, and the like. We know not to make all of life into a journey, and not all love must occur on a battlefield. We refuse to read between lines, we play our cards wrong, and we do judge books by their covers. We know that cliched metaphors in your writing will turn off your readers faster than water off a duck's—You get the idea.
 
But cliche still creeps in. Many writers still can’t resist to punctuate their writing with casual colloquialisms in the form of stock phrases. A stock phrase is employed to punctuate a passage or to add emphasis. And so every thing that is “first” is also “foremost.” Everything that is “last” is also assured to not be “the least.” And all “opportunities” are “golden.”

An interesting style question materialized the other day that, on its face, seems to carry only a little significance. It was an idiosyncratic matter that may apply to only select manuscripts, but which I thought was also more broadly instructive for those writing historical non-fiction. The question involves quotations, specifically as chapter epigraphs, but it also opens up a broader discussion about how and when to use quotations in general in history writing.
 
An author with whom I have been working wanted to use a particular quotation both as a chapter epigraph and also repeated as a quotation later in the chapter. I pushed back and suggested recycling quotes in this way was not a good idea. The author insisted, however, and after an appeal to the publisher, I relented. One should always choose one’s battles, and in this case, the stakes were not high enough and the infraction not severe enough to ruffle an author’s feathers. So I let the repetition stand. It is not the end of the world, or of this book’s credibility (it is a really good book), to have the same quotation exist in two places, as I readily acknowledge. But I still maintain I am right in this instance, and that the matter is worth an extra thought.
 
An epigraph, you will recall, is a quotation, usually in full, placed at the beginning of a chapter as something of a literary appetizer or thematic soupçon. It is designed to whet the reader’s appetite, offer a pithy or engaging way to prepare a reader’s mind for the chapter, and, perhaps most importantly, propose a metonymical or allegorical indication of what the chapter’s theme is about. Indeed, it is the chapter theme in brief.
 
So what’s wrong with recycling the chapter’s theme as an ordinary quotation later in the chapter?

​The awards keep coming for Calvin Stovall. Last year Calvin’s Hidden Hospitality: Untold Stories of Black Hotel, Motel, and Resort Owners from the Pioneer Days to the Civil Rights Era (Brown Books) was nominated for a prestigious NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Literary Work category. Just last month we learned Hidden Hospitality was given the Literary Award for Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation by the 2026 Black Caucus American Library Association. Calvin’s book is a trailblazing account of black hotel, restaurant, and resort owners who built businesses in the face of Jim Crow segregation, and in so doing built communities and legacies. Many readers may be familiar with the so-called Green Book publication which alerted black travelers to friendly establishments for rest and refreshment. Calvin’s book uncovered the stories of the people who ran those establishments as they fought racism, forged profitable enterprises, accrued political influence, and in many cases created centers for civil rights action and activism.

In previous posts I encouraged readers to avoid adverbs when possible, and to construct active rather than passive sentences. Today I’ll show you how and why to follow that advice.

A great, or even good, sentence may offer description. A truly great sentence almost always describes something, which means it may layer literary device upon literary device: metaphor, simile, synecdoche, or metonymy. It may offer allusion, poetry, and even lyrical beauty. But other than a sentence that is wholly about a state of being (“It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”—Toni Morrison, Sula), certainly for expository writing, most sentences will offer action. And action requires that we attend to our verbs.

One of the very first pieces of formal writing advice I ever received in college was to avoid use of the infinitive verb “to be” in all its conjugations: is, am, are, were, was, etc. I didn’t quite understand why Professor Lynn banished “to be” from his assignments, so I carried out the orders dutifully. So accustomed was I to “is,” “was,” and “am” in my speech that I struggled to find ways to fix the offending passages. Only later did I come to understand. The problem, I would learn in graduate school, and then pass on to my own students, was with sentence construction that we call “passive.”

How to be a more effective writer? Well, there are emotional and psychological cadences that are important for effective writing: confidence, perseverance, perhaps courage. One must be able to tread the inevitable ebbs and flows of motivation. There are no shortcuts, and discipline is imperative. But leaving those emotional and psychological registers behind for the moment, I’m reflecting on the one piece of technical advice that I have most often offered throughout my career to the question, “How can I improve my writing?” If I could give but one answer to that question, I think it would be: Attend to your topic sentences

I imagine for some people being edited feels like a kind of assault, one’s deepest failings and frailties laid bare for the judgment of others. I know that I have edited authors who are awaiting my response to their work like a defendant awaiting a verdict. I suspect to many authors, a query in the margin can come across as an accusation: Why did you choose THIS word and not THAT? Why did you phrase it this way and not that? What is WRONG WITH YOU???

This feeling of the edit as a judgment can work in the opposite direction, too, as many writers look forward to the euphoria of vindication, of having their worth or their talent verified by an expert, self-esteem padded and pampered by gushing praise.

But an edit is not an audit. It is not the time either for condemnation or vindication, however powerful the psychology of the moment might be. I want to suggest that an edit is better thought of not as a moment of judgment, but as a process of collaborative refinement. 

Several weeks ago I surveyed the multitude of steps it takes to publish your book. Most of those steps occur once you submit your manuscript and may be opaque to first-time writers. Let’s talk a little about what it takes to get your manuscript to submittable quality. In other words, let’s talk about what I, or any qualified editor, do for you and your manuscript.