About
I'm a writer and editor. I work on personal essays of my own, longer feature pieces for the magazines that still publish them, and editing work for independent authors and small literary projects. The site exists because I prefer to have a quiet, plain home for the work, rather than depending on whichever social network happens to be in vogue this year.
The writing
The essays I write tend to be about ordinary things, looked at slowly. A walk taken on a particular afternoon. A small disagreement remembered ten years later. The texture of a friendship. Occasionally a piece will turn into something longer — a feature for a magazine, or a chapter for a longer project I've been picking away at on and off — but most of what I publish is shorter than 3,000 words.
I'm not on social media in any consistent way, and I don't have a newsletter. The way to follow the writing is to come back to this site every few months, or to write to me and ask if I'd send a note when something new is up.
The editing work
I take on a small number of editing projects each year. The shape of the work is usually one of three things:
- Developmental editing on a manuscript in progress. Several rounds of structural feedback, on the level of "this chapter does what?" rather than line-by-line.
- Line and copy editing on a manuscript close to final. Sentence-level work, with a careful eye for the writer's voice (the worst editor is the one who turns every sentence into the editor's own).
- Editorial consultation for small publications. Reading slates, helping shape an issue, occasional brief feedback on submissions.
The clients are mostly independent authors working without an agent or publisher, and the occasional academic moving a thesis toward book form. I work with one or two longer projects at a time, plus shorter consultation work on a regular cadence.
How to get in touch
Email [email protected]. A few words about what you're working on, where you are in the project, and roughly the kind of help you're hoping to get is enough for a first reply. I usually answer within a week, and the editing slate fills several months ahead, so an early note is better than a late one.
About the site itself
This site is hand-written HTML. No JavaScript, no analytics that follow you around the web, no cookie banners. It is meant to last for as long as the writing is worth re-reading, and to not bother you while you're reading it.