Bring Your Writing to Life
"I believed then, as I do now, in the goodness of the published word: it seemed to contain an essential goodness, like the smell of leaf mold."
- E.B. White
I fell in love with storytelling as a child. Since then my passion for it has grown with me. By nature, I am a helper. I am compassionate and supportive: I want to see you succeed in telling the story you want to tell, without falling prey to insecurities or other emotional perils along the way toward completing your project.
I’ve a keen eye for detail, curiosity for context, and an intuitive process for sussing out issues or questions in a piece. I delve into editing with the aim of advocacy for the writer, their words, and their intent.
I proofread, copyedit, and do developmental work with fiction and narrative non-fiction manuscripts and short projects, from sci-fi/fantasy novels and memoirs to personal essays and blog posts. I have also done localization writing and editing for an audiobook company.
I love when I have a chance to work on poetry, plays, and children's books. I'm a giant fan of strong female leads, fantasy, and engaging memoirs. Some of my favorite authors are Robin McKinley, Jesmyn Ward, Alexis M. Smith, Ocean Vuong, and Xiran Jay Zhao. The work I edit reflects these inspirations.
My professional life has included roles in the non-profits, human rights, and arts spaces, because collaborative, mission-driven work is important to me. Woven throughout my "day job" life was the thread of my love for reading, writing, nerding out over grammar books, and helping family, friends, and employers develop and complete their writing projects.
I am excited that my work life now revolves around helping writers like you achieve their writing dreams.
For more about my professional background, you can visit my profile on LinkedIn.
Would you like to work together? Yay!
I offer three types of project collaboration:
Small projects ($25/hr with $15 minimum): This includes proofing, copyediting, and developmental work on emails, papers, reports, website and social media copy, children's books, zines; in general, anything less than 5,000 words.
Copyediting ($0.025 per word): This includes proofing with light written commentary as well as two virtual meetings (not to exceed two hours total) at the start and end of the reading process.
Developmental editing ($0.045 per word): This is a deep dive on works in progress. It includes proofing and in-depth commentary as well as four virtual meetings and two full read throughs of the manuscript, ideally at two different stages of the writing process. Naturally during our work flow, I'm able to help you by setting deadlines and providing support in case you experience issues like losing your thread or experiencing a writing block. In such cases where additional support is needed, like a third read-through or more in-depth virtual meetings, and the per-word rate has reached its maximum, an hourly rate will be calculated. There will be no surprises: I will communicate the maximum hours at the per-word rate during our initial meeting.
Add-on:
Fact-checking ($.006-$.01): This can be added to either copyediting or developmental editing projects. The actual rate for fact-checking will depend on the nature of the project. For example, if you've written a story based in reality with fewer real-world details then this would likely be a light fact-checking load versus a heavier fact-checking job with something like a historical novel or a narrative non-fiction piece.
How to get started? Send me a message using the form below.
In your outreach message, please be sure to include...
- a little bit about you;
- a synopsis of your project, including your project's word count;
- what you're looking for in terms of editing assistance; and,
- your preferred timeline.
Editing Project Initial Outreach
2024 © Kara Q. Lewis