An Uncommon Process

Project management & comprehensive editing services for the manuscript that’s “nearly there”

The final months before submitting your manuscript to the publishing house. The writing process winds down, and the publishing process has yet to begin. The deadline approaches, preceded by anxiety about your book. All the pieces are there, but you can’t be sure if they’re in the right places. Those forest-for-the-trees questions: Continuity? Reader experience? You need another pair of eyes, and not just for errors of copy or grammar. You need someone to read the manuscript and identify whether it is the best-possible draft. Is this what you want the publishing house editor to read?

Our uncommon process covers your manuscript’s last mile. Project management services keep things on track for the deadline. You’re informed by my close reading and inspired by our weekly talks; assured that what goes to the publishing house will be the best iteration of your book, ready for the editorial process and free from errors of grammar, copy, and continuity. Having delegated the details, you can engage in the creative work of that final polish.

We’ll tailor the process to your needs, within the context of what has worked well so far. Remote collaborative editing, in real time, with an editing partner who is as fanatical about commas as you are, regularly outsmarts spellcheck and polices grammar while simultaneously reading for the big stuff: issues of continuity, theme, character and the arc of story.

Other authors have said that, within a week of handing off their manuscript, deadline anxiety gave way to the opening of creative possibility that can be so elusive on this last stretch of the book-writing journey.

A flat hourly fee and online collaborative tools help to keep the process as unfussy as it can be. You’ve come this far. Your book is almost ready for submission. Let’s work together to make the last mile productive, not panic-inducing.