As a writing coach and editor, I help authors recognize their best work and finish it. This is work I love and have been doing since the late 1980s.’
I work with writers on full or partial manuscripts: short stories, novels, memoir, essays or poems. My goal is to respond to what is new and immediate on each page, where the lines shine, where they seem to be stuck, where the language, tone, story and/or poem sings.
It’s also to listen to what the writer needs and ask questions to help advance the work.
Depending on what you seek, this takes different forms:
- Setting up a writing schedule and deadlines to help you finish a project
- Responding to drafts with notes on the page and written summaries, if desired, about the narrative structure and organization, deftness of plot, arc, catharsis and characters, or each poem, form, rhythm or overall impact of a group of poems.
- Scheduling times to talk about the work-in-progress. In memoir, for example, writers may struggle with bearing witness, writing through taboos, and writing the past fluidly without getting bogged down in it.
- Final editing and polishing of the near-complete manuscript
- Discussing your readers, possible agents & editors, & publication options
Details:
- Meetings in Redlands studio, over the phone or online discussions
- Written response to work-in-progress
- Summer or academic year meetings
Please contact Sandra for rates, times and availability.