I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl. At its best, writing allows us to develop and share our voices. However, we often miss our biggest potential and the biggest strengths and weaknesses in our work. In fact, it was when I was exploring ways to edit my own work that I discovered developmental editing. Through a series of serendipitous events, I found a developmental editing course that taught me I had been thinking like a developmental editor all along.
Developmental editing combines all the work I have ever done. I taught college English for twenty-three years, sixteen of them full time. The longer I taught, the more I wanted to ask open-ended questions and provide different options for how to write things. At least when it was possible—as it nearly always is in creative writing, and sometimes is in other types of writing—I wanted to help people make their work the best that it could be without requiring that everyone use the same formula.
I have an MA in English from University of Arkansas and a PhD in English from University of Maryland. Along the way, I also got certified as an integral coach with New Ventures West. This intensified my sense that while there may be expectations for different types of writing and different projects, we are all individuals who can hear mentoring and decide which way is best for us.
Developmental editing is all about coaching an author toward the best manuscript possible.
