Approach

My editing and teaching are informed by a lineage that blends years of publishing experience with a wide range of creative interests, including contemplative practice, tarot, and natural history.

I work independently and personally tailor my approach to meet you wherever you are in your writing. Expect clear, down-to-earth guidance and support that is companionable and good-humoured; rigour and lightness go together in creative matters.

My method is holistic and diagnostic, grounded in a studio approach that is attentive to the mechanics of craft as well as the shape, pattern, and movement of writing as it’s taking shape. Together we locate the heart of the story, untangle what’s gnarly, and explore what the work might become. Imagination, texture, voice: what gives writing presence, singularity, and force? What’s alive on the page?

I also attend to the writer – the rhythms of creative practice, the histories you bring to your writing, and the ecosystems where your work belongs. Much of the process lies in orientation: finding sustainable ways to draft, revise, and experiment, and most of all learning to trust your own instincts.

A writer once thanked me for asking ‘penetrating questions’ about their manuscript. I take that as a compliment and also offer it as a useful description of the work of good editors and teachers. No one can give quick fixes or blueprints for publication, but I try to surface the right lines of inquiry and suggest departure points that help you move the work forward with clarity and purpose.

Influences

The constellation of influences in my work includes teachers and practitioners who encourage writers and artists to build their creativity in intuitive ways: regular practice, clear perception, close reading, trusting the natural speaking voice. Also: a certain wildness of mind. Much is about creating the conditions and processes in which the good stuff arises.

Of great significance has been the experience of contemplative education I encountered studying and later teaching at Naropa University.

I balance this with an understanding of the practical matters of publishing I gained as a senior editor at Little, Brown and later honing my craft of editing as a freelancer for many other publishers.

An interest in tarot led to the development of my Four Elements framework, which creates a holistic and accessible model for writing and other creative arts.

And studies in natural history led me to Field Work, a notebook practice that hothouses personal observation and imaginative inquiry.

Specific teachers who’ve inspired me in either their classrooms or their writings include: Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Bhanu Kapil, Jack Collom, Keith Abbott, Stephanie Heit, Natalie Goldberg, Lynda Barry, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Stephen King, Joe Brainard, Allen Ginsberg, Rachel Pollack, Robin Wall Kimmerer, George Saunders.

Some principles to write by

I take to heart the following statements about writing:

If you have to ask, ‘How do I do it?’ you’ll never do it. The whole thing is how to get in there and figure out how to do it.  — John Waters

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself — though, thank god I had never committed them to paper — I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn’t hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don’t believe in that at all anymore. — Jamaica Kincaid

Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason — John Keats

I try to make writers actually see what they have written, where the strength is. Usually in fiction there’s something that leaps out—an image or a moment that is strong enough to center the story. If they can see it, they can exploit it, enhance it, and build a fiction that is subtle and new. I don’t try to teach technique, because frankly most technical problems go away when a writer realizes where the life of a story lies. I don’t see any reason in fine-tuning something that’s essentially not going anywhere anyway. What they have to do first is interact in a serious way with what they’re putting on a page. When people are fully engaged with what they’re writing, a striking change occurs, a discipline of language and imagination. — Marilynne Robinson.

And though I don’t like to contradict St Marilynne, I do think there is a value to teaching/learning technique, especially in learning to read as a writer. My editorial feedback often includes plenty of suggestions for reading – models in style and form, comparison titles, books on craft. Favourite works, acclaimed prizewinners, category bestsellers, classic texts, books from childhood: reading and rereading and listening to audio versions will help us develop an intuitive sense of what leaves an impression in writing.