Whether you are a brand new or prolific writer, editing can provide support, structure, reimagination, or honing to your work. The following are the takeaways my clients most often identify during and after our work together.

Learning about yourself and your work:

What is most critical about editing is identifying and amplifying what is particular to each writer and project. I read every manuscript twice. I don’t believe in providing feedback before I’ve absorbed the whole scope of what the writer has to say and how they’re trying to say it. With my comprehensive package, the exchange I share with a writer between my first and second passes is designed to ensure that the feedback I provide in my margin notes honors the writer’s vision, intuitions, and sensibilities, above all else. Sometimes my job is to help a writer see themselves and their work more clearly for what it already is. Sometimes the writer knows exactly what they want to say, and my job is to brainstorm ways to make that most powerful on the page.

Learning about craft and revision:

Editing can be an intensive learning experience, an individualized educational process. For newer writers, especially, editing can not only strengthen a manuscript or piece, it can nurture the particularities of your work and process. Writers will come away from the editorial experience with the vocabulary and confidence to ask the questions and employ the methods that are most useful to the generation and revision of their next project. Those questions and methods are unique to each writer. My job is to find the framework and atmosphere that will sustain you in all of your future endeavors.

Taking the next steps:

The editorial process can tighten or hone a final draft for publication. You may be most interested in an ideological exchange—to examine the layering of symbolism in a piece, to better understand how you want to think and talk about the metaphorical dimensions of a project before sending it into the world. Editing can also offer the more pragmatic bode of confidence needed to begin querying a manuscript or submitting to journals or prizes.

Reinvigorating a long project:

What I hear more than anything from writers who’ve dedicated years to a project is, “I’m too close to the work.” My job, then, is to help a writer reflect on what they set out to do, and provide objective feedback on the ways in which they are accomplishing that, or ways in which their draft may have obfuscated its inciting intentions. And, sometimes, a project has simply outgrown its genesis. And that’s okay! The world changes (rapidly) and so do we. I can help a writer discover how their work might meet them where they are now. I can also help a writer find a clear signal on the change their project may already be revealing to them.

I earned my MFA from New York University. I was the recipient of a 2019 Poetry Foundation, Poetry Incubator fellowship, a 2017-2018 fellowship at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and am a Teaching Artist Project (a social justice-based arts in education program) graduate. In 2015, I joined the editorial staff of No Tokens journal where I first had the opportunity to edit across genres. In addition to my work at No Tokens, I have been working independently as a freelance editor since 2018. 

I have worked on book length manuscripts that have been published by or are forthcoming from: Algonquin Books, Bloomsbury, Duke University Press, HarperCollins, Henry Holt, Vintage Books/Knopf, Mariner, McSweeney's, Random House, Running Wild, Sceptre, St. Martin’s, among others. To date, I have worked on memoirs, essays and essay collections, investigative and hybrid nonfiction, novels, short stories and short story collections, poems and poetry collections, prize and application samples, personal statements, graphic memoirs, flash pieces, chapbooks, cookbooks, screenplays, lyric essays, autofiction, and more. I take on roughly 60 editorial projects per year, approximately half of which are book-length, totaling 1.5-2 million words. 

In addition to editing, I have taught creative writing since 2014 at: New York University, Drew University, College of Charleston, UMass Amherst, and University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. I have also guest lectured in myriad undergraduate classrooms on the topics of editing and freelancing.

I work in all genres and with a wide range of content. If you’re unsure if I would be a good fit for your project, please feel free to reach out. 

At this time, I am not accepting international travel memoirs by non-POC writers. As a white editor, I cannot speak to the socio-cultural context necessary to provide guidance to these narratives, nor should my consultation be central to any such editorial or critical review. If you are a white writer working on a travel memoir (particularly non-Anglo European travel), I strongly encourage you to hire sensitivity and cultural accuracy readers. I would be glad to provide contacts and resources for such. These readers are abundant and full of insight. Regardless of what stage you're in, a sensitivity or cultural accuracy professional’s feedback can aid you in understanding the appropriate framing and centering of your project, and might motivate a broader interrogation of its place within our contemporary publishing landscape.

Developmental Consult:

I suggest the Developmental Consult for writers who suspect there may still be systemic revisions (tense, POV, scene and character building, structure, etc.) to be addressed in their manuscript, who have not yet experienced classes or instruction focused on the craft of writing, or for whom the craft of writing feels new.

I also recommend the Developmental Consult for writers who are curious about an active exploration of alternative narrative developments (plot, character, and ordering revisions) for their manuscript. 

Comprehensive Edit:

I suggest the Comprehensive Edit for writers who have already considered technical systemic revisions, or for whom their narrative and structure feels largely realized. This track may be useful to writers who have shared their writing with instructors, classmates, beta readers, or a writing group, and are looking for more intensive feedback.

I recommend the Comprehensive Edit for writers who have particular interest in improving the lyric and sonic quality of their sentences.

Next availability for full length manuscripts averages between 2 - 5 months from the date of first inquiry. Individual stories, essays, or poems can most often be scheduled within 4-8 weeks. If a rush timeline is requested, and can be accommodated for a project, it will incur a 20% fee. Please feel encouraged to inquire about rush projects. 

Full-length projects cancelled or postponed two weeks or less before an agreed upon start date will incur a fee of $100 per day of the reservation. Individual stories, essays, or collections of 10 poems or fewer, canceled two weeks or less before an agreed upon start date will incur a flat fee of $100.

Although I most often prefer to work with complete manuscripts, some exceptions can be made for manuscripts that are significantly underway, and about which the author has either a clear vision and/or a clear set of questions with which they intend to move forward. I will always be transparent about how constructive I believe my services can be to your project. Please don’t hesitate to reach out, and we can discuss!

Please feel encouraged to inquire about an editorial package tailored to your budget! An abbreviated version of the Developmental Edit can often meet an exact cost that works for you. 

As of January 2025, I will be implementing a sliding scale model. Project costs will reflect a 100%, 75%, and 50% price, determined by each writer’s relative financial standing.

Phone consultations are welcome as an add-on to any editorial package. Phone or Zoom meetings are $100 for any amount of time up to one hour, and $25 per every 15 minutes beyond the first hour.

I will always provide written feedback with your editing package to ensure that you take the maximum amount of useful information away from our work together. What is provided to you in writing is thoroughly and clearly organized before delivery, and is designed to be saved and returned to throughout your revision process. 

Yes, query consults are available and can be booked within two weeks. The query consult package includes: materials for general query resources, guidance and tips for drafting your query letter, and a substantive edit and optional second pass of your drafted query letter.

As a developmental editor, I am not able to provide sufficient insight on query samples or partials (ie: first 10 pages, first chapter, and so on). I am, however, happy to book developmental editing on complete MSs for folks interested in preparing query packages.

Although I offer tips for developing the pool of agents you might query, the query consult does not include specific suggestions or recommendations for agent representation. Querying can be an expansive undertaking and the needs and conditions of agents and agencies are ever-changing.

Proposals are a particular form, with very particular objectives. You will want an editorial eye that specializes in this regard. I am happy to provide recommendations for proposal workshops and consultation services!

I'm happy to accommodate any kind of payment plan that would be most ideal for you—whether that be a deposit down, a series of installments, or a single payment upon completion. The estimate I will provide ahead of services is a projected minimum and maximum hours of work and the cost that would correspond with each, as well as a guarantee that the cost will not exceed the higher of the two provided figures (even if my hours do).

I provide asynchronous writing prompt courses. Each prompt is delivered with a packet of supplemental materials, and can be provided all at once or on a 5- or 10-week schedule. Each prompt will highlight one craft-based concept for generation or revision. Your materials will be custom tailored to your interests and skill level. Writers can select their own curriculum from a robust list of topics, or have their curriculum designed based on answers to a short questionnaire. Beginners and prose writers are welcome and very encouraged, in addition to poets. These courses are especially useful and fun for groups! Editorial feedback on up to 10 pages of work can be added to any course.

I am teaching a two-day course through Poets & Writers on May 17th & 18th 2024. Registration can be found here.

My wife, T Kira Māhealani Madden, and I are building online classes and programming for editing and creative writing. Stay tuned!