Writing Coach
Writing Coach
Do you need what I do best?
Developmental Editor
At any stage of a shorter projects, from articles to book chapters, as well as job talks, keynotes, or conference talks—I especially excel at creating engaging oral performances of academic work, I can:
Work with you to develop a life-work structure that can help you enjoy your writing on a very regular basis that feels good for you (that is, maybe not every single day, but frequently enough that you don’t open the document and wonder who wrote it).
Support you in moving from the raw materials of an idea or a short draft to prose in your own voice that realizes those ideas—in the French sense of “réaliser,” to bring a concept into a fully concrete, material form.
Based on your needs and preferences, this support will include :
-creating next-step writing and reading prompts;
-reading your drafts to identify areas to continue refining;
-reverse outlining the draft as a guide for prioritizing the argument’s flow;
-and meeting together on the phone or on zoom to talk through any blocks you might be experiencing in the process.
My experience : Since 2004, I have participated in many different types of writing exchanges and accountability groups. I have experimented with many different ways of working together with other writers to structure a creative and inspiring relationship to scholarly writing. I work with accountability partners to build strong routines for keeping track of ideas and their development as writing weaves in and out of all of our other responsibilities; I exchange article manuscripts with writing partners at all stages of drafting to help shape the ideas and tighten the prose as we move from draft to submission.
Book Doctor
Doctoring your book for me is to support you through a revision process. It is so common to finish a draft, know that it needs work, but be so close to it that you have no idea where to begin revising. This is the ideal moment to have a book doctor come in and read your full draft, tell you what they see, and then work with you to establish a feasible revision action plan.
I will do a full read of your manuscript with enormous care and attention to detail in order to identify your nomenclature and key terminology, throughlines, organizing metaphors, and different types of evidence you use. These thorough observations help me to coach you in how to revise the manuscript so as to most effectively :
signpost and support your argument throughout the book;
stabilize your vocabulary and your chapter organization so that the prose and structure is cohesive;
engage the field with through citational politics that reflect your scholarly values;
eliminate redundancies as well as amp up sections or concepts that need further detail for general readers (or readers who do not live inside your own head).
I will then meet with you to discuss my suggestions and how you can best use them to create a path forward with the manuscript.
My experience : In the late 2010s, I book doctored four of my friends’ dissertations-to-book manuscripts. Through this process, I realized that this is where my editorial eye is the most robust and my way of coaching the most exponentially helpful. In 2020 and 2022, I served as the external reviewer for book manuscripts at Rutgers UP and UVaP, and as such, have an intimate sense of the other side of the manuscript submission process.
I have been studying the genres of academic writing, experimenting with my own scholarly voice, working with fellow writer-scholars, and self-reflexively analyzing every aspect of the process for the past twenty years. It is my greatest professional joy to think about academic writing and finding ways to work their genres so that they can house our most experimental, brilliant, and heart-held ideas.
As a book doctor or developmental editor, my aim is to help you create this relationship to your scholarship as well.
Note: while I am capable of copy editing, it is not my zone of genius. I would be thrilled to refer you to wonderfully capable and experienced copy editors instead.
Second note: I hope you can feel from my prose here who I am and what it might be like to work with me: I am professional, incisive, and experienced. I also grew up in California in the ‘90s, so my voice is marked by upspeak, and I tend towards informal warmth in my demeanor.
fAQs
fAQs
TEstimonials
TEstimonials