The traditional publishing process can be full of surprises for a first-time author. Here's what a few writers publishing in 2019 have learned since signing on the dotted line.

We make all sorts of assumptions about what it will be like to actually become published authors for the first time

The final stages before book publication involve copyediting (and then proofreading). It's your last chance to make changes before your writing goes public. What can you do at this stage to assure your book stays true to your unique vision and style?

Every soon-to-be published writer is nervous and excited about copyedits. Will they require rewriting of beloved text

This month of DeadDarlings, Novel Incubator alum and author Rachel Barenbaum interviewed Leni Zumas about her new novel, Red Clocks (Little, Brown, 2018). Leni Zumas is also the author of Farewell Navigator: Stories (Open City, 2008) and the novel The Listeners (Tin House, 2012), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Leni lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is an associate professor in the MFA and BFA programs at Portland State University.

This month, the DeadDarlings team shared what's worked for us when we've taken a red pen to our writing. Each of the featured bloggers are graduates of Grub's Novel Incubator program.

Character Count

Sharissa Jones exceeds 144 characters to examines sentences that work in Jumping the Cut: Writing Transitional Scenes in the Netflix and Twitter Age .

Debut Deadline

Belle Brett shares her preflight checklist for marketing her novel Six Months until Publication: Tentative Tips from a Debut Novelist. 

Existential Editing

Looking for Ten Tips for Losing a Hundred Pages? Emily Ross has ...

 It’s been an exciting ride for former journalist and long-time Grubbie Kim Savage, who just released her third YA novel, In Her Skin, following the success of After The Woods in 2016 and Beautiful Broken Girls (one of Kirkus’s 10 Best YA) in 2017