It’s About Confidence.

As an editor, my job is to help you succeed as a writer by sharing with the audience you want to reach the passion, knowledge, and experience that motivate you to write.

Our work together will be a long, ongoing, collegial conversation. You’ll help me understand your hopes and expectations for your book or article, and I’ll share my expertise to help you shape a manuscript that realizes those hopes and expectations.

In practical terms, that means we will begin with a detailed discussion of the audience you envision for your writing, how you want to reach them, your timetable, and the main ideas and experiences you want them to take away from your writing.

Then we’ll turn to your manuscript and together figure out how to make sure that it engages the readers you want in a way that is accessible and keeps them reading.

You may have shared your writing with friends, family, and colleagues and received useful feedback.

But as someone who does not know you personally and who may be unfamiliar with the subjects you are discussing, I serve as a professional first reader and provide a new and more objective set of eyes for your work. I stand in for your future readers and help you make sure that the words you use will communicate with them in exactly the way you intend.

And we’ll focus on the words you use, how you arrange them, and how to best punctuate them. But especially if you are working with a professional editor for the first time, it’s important to understand that editors do much more than proofread or correct the grammar and punctuation of a manuscript (though that is very important, too).

And as we work through your manuscript, I’ll suggest ways that we can make your manuscript accessible to your readers, so that they focus on your ideas and don’t get sidetracked by writing that’s confusing and hard to follow. I’ll give you specific and concrete options to chose from, but the final decision about how your manuscript looks and reads always rests with you.

As an editor, my main job is to gain your confidence in my ability to help you write the book or article that you want to produce.

And to give you confidence that the words you use and the way that you express yourself in your writing do justice to the thoughts and experience you want to share with your readers.