About Me
I have more than a decade of experience as an instructor and tutor in higher education. I’ve always been the person friends and family turn to when they need something revised, edited, or clarified, or if they encounter a punctuation or grammar oddity. It was my mentor at Lake Erie College, Dr. Jennifer Swartz-Levine, who first encouraged me to consider graduate school, where I got a taste of teaching and being surrounded by a community of writers as dedicated to honing their craft as I was. My goals upon graduating (besides the obvious: getting published) went in two directions: toward academia, and toward professional editing.
Me and Horses
Horses have been a major part of my life for nearly as long as reading and writing have. My first job was on a horse farm at age 15, and I’ve work at a horse rescue, a therapeutic riding facility, a few boarder barns, and one Rocky Mountain trail riding operation. I have a bachelor’s degree in Equine Facility Management from Lake Erie College, where I took courses on equine fitness, health, nutrition, pasture management, facility building/maintenance, and riding, and I studied abroad at Oatridge Agricultural College in Ecclesmachan, Scotland in 2011.
My master’s thesis, The Bones of the Horse, is an essay collection on the evolution of man’s relationship with horses, braided with a reflection on my own experience as a horseperson. Part of my research for that project included traveling to Mongolia to experience the traditional horse culture there, and to Vancouver to take an intensive mounted combat course. Horses tend to factor prominently in my writing, and I enjoy critiquing and offering assistance to other writers who want to include horses in their stories but don’t know much about them.
About the Editing Process
The editing process begins with a consultation over phone call or Zoom to understand the scope of the project, square away deadline and cost expectations, discuss the author’s goals, and, most importantly, determine whether the writer and editor are a good fit for one another. After the editor completes the edit and sends the writer the marked-up manuscript and editorial letter, a follow-up meeting is scheduled so that any lingering questions or concerns can be addressed.
Developmental editing is about helping an author reach their goals for their story with the smallest number of changes. Sometimes this requires shifting their perspective on a story’s structure or characters.
“Giving a good developmental edit is less about correcting. It’s more about helping the author navigate the revision… Getting writers to feel excited about revision is half our job as developmental editors. The other half is helping them realize that they can do it. And we can achieve these goals by providing feedback that is actionable.”
~ Val Mathews, developmental editor, instructor, and coach
Unlike copyediting, line editing, or proofreading, which focus on accuracy, consistency, and technical correctness and happen after a draft is completed and revised, developmental editing is a process that happens after a first draft, or sometimes before a first draft is even completed. Developmental editors provide feedback on big-picture elements such as narrative arc, character development, dialogue, thematic consistency, and balancing backstory with front story. Sometimes authors plant excellent little seeds of potential within their stories, seeds that can complicate a flat plot or make a dull character interesting.
Copyediting is the process of closely reading a text and editing it word by word to ensure clarity, coherence, continuity, and consistency. Sometimes a story has issues with its logic or organization that may seem clear to the author but may trip up or confuse a reader and thus muddle the writer’s message/story. Copyediting can also include correcting errors in things like grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, and usage, ensuring consistency in stylistic details, checking basic facts, and maintaining continuity. (Are the main character’s eyes blue on page 7 but green on page 53? Is their living room window facing the sunset on the night their date stands them up, but facing the sunrise when they call their sister to gush about their new love interest? A copyeditor catches these things.)