How I Work

I’m a writer with over ten years of experience working in publishing, most recently as a freelance editor.
I’ve spent the majority of my career doing what I enjoy most: working closely with authors to develop their manuscripts. I’ve worked with all kinds of writers, published and unpublished, new and established, on a broad range of fiction, memoir and non-fiction.

Every editorial process is different but my aims are usually the same: to give practical, concrete advice to help writers move confidently forward to the next stage, while also raising wider questions about what the book is doing. I want to give the writer tools to improve the manuscript structurally and at the level of the sentence: I’m as happy discussing whether characters are fully developed, as I am the difference between colons and semi-colons. I am rigorous and honest with my responses, while remaining sensitive to what a writer is trying to achieve.

I began my career as a graduate trainee at Phaidon, was an editor at Faber & Faber for eight years, and went freelance in 2015. As a freelancer, I’ve worked for many major publishing houses and leading manuscript assessment services including Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, The Literary Consultancy, Unbound, The Faber Academy and Orion, among others.

As an author, I understand what it’s like on the other side of the manuscript. I’ve been lucky enough to have had my own writing edited by excellent professionals, and I learnt as much from that experience as I did from my role at Faber. I know how hard it is to get to a first draft, and I believe support and encouragement are just as important as critique.

If you have some writing you need help with — whether it’s a partial draft, a twentieth draft, a proposal or a submissions package — please get in touch.