WRITE BY YOU

A personal mentoring service

Experience shared.
Helping novice and veteran writers reach their full potential.

Services Offered

Private telephone or on-line consultations

Proposal Evaluations (plot synopsis only or with 3 chapters)

Full Manuscript Evaluation

Troubleshooting

Brainstorming

Unblocking Writer's Block

Marketing Advice

Creative Goal Focusing

Teaching Edits

Increasing Productivity (Ask me about a Book in a Year)

Advanced Track for Published Authors

Things I Can Help You With

Fiction including novels, short stories, and novellas in all genres. (I specialize in romance, mysteries, thrillers, fantasy, historical fiction, and material written for children and teenagers.) Memoirs, biographies, family histories and journaling are also some of my favorites.

All services are prepaid and dates/hours reserved to ensure your privacy and timeliness.

The Basics: 30-minute private consultation, phone or e-mail. (Publishing industry lesson, getting started to write, Q&A)

My Specialties

Beginning and unpublished writers, mysteries, thrillers and suspense novels, romantic fiction, children's books, personal stories.

Be assured: Unlike with many editorial services, I never ship out your work to other people. What you write stays with me. I am your personal writing coach, the only one who sees it or touches it.

Getting to Know Your Personal Writing Coach

When I started writing with the dream of becoming a published author, I discovered something surprising. The most difficult task wasn't putting words on paper. It was getting honest, knowledgeable feedback on my writing. What was I doing right? What were my weaknesses? Did my manuscripts look like the work of a professional, or had I unwittingly left little clues that I was a rank amateur? After years of writing and submitting to publishers, the only thing I had to show for my effort were rejection slips.

Then something magical happened. I found a few talented individuals who became my mentors. They were experienced, published authors with dozens of books to their credit. Time and again they'd been down the road I wished to travel. They had learned to develop exciting plots, create fascinating characters, and market their fiction to major publishers. They had successfully pitched their stories, won contracts, worked effectively with publishing professionals and seen their names emblazoned on the covers of their nationally distributed books.

Teaching/Coaching Experience

I have taught for a dozen years at The Institute of Children's Literature and Long Ridge Writer's Group. My weekend writing seminars for continuing education programs, including several for John Hopkins University, have always been popular. I speak at and participate in professional writing/publishing panels at many writing conferences, including those for Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and regional writers' support organizations. Many of my former students have since become published authors in their own right.

These pros pulled no punches. Sometimes I left a coaching session flying high, secure in the knowledge that my story was on track. Other times I departed from my mentors fighting back tears of frustration. How could I have made such foolish mistakes? But I took every word they offered to heart. And I wrote, wrote...wrote.

Suddenly, the rejections were no longer form letters. Editors dashed off notes suggesting revisions and resubmission. Some passed on my current book idea but asked to be remembered when my next novel was ready. Then "the call" came from an editor at Simon and Schuster who wanted to buy my novel, Pocket Change.