Manuscript Development, Consultations, and Editing
Jan specializes in helping each writer and poet express themselves with clarity, delve into memory and emotion, develop and articulate their unique style, and organize their writing to express themselves with power and precision.
Prose and poetry manuscripts, artist and hybrid projects may be submitted to Jan at any stage of the creative process. She is happy to work with all genres, including fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and poetry. Jan welcomes works-in-progress, full-length manuscripts, chapbook manuscripts, and new and selected projects. She also offers feedback on small groups of poems and individual essays and stories.
To contact Jan about your writing needs, email janfreemaneditorial@gmail.com.
How Jan Approaches Your Work
During a careful review of your project, Jan focuses on the literal and emotional narratives, as well as the manuscript’s organization, language, texture, shape, tension, and flow. She highlights the most powerfully expressed prose passages or poems and indicates areas that will benefit from revision. Editorial feedback is offered in a manuscript-review letter and via Track Changes.
Conceptual and developmental advice and feedback, line editing, and text editing are provided. After thoughtfully and thoroughly reading and evaluating your body of work, Jan will discuss her observations and suggestions with you during a Zoom meeting following your receipt of the manuscript review.
Coaching & Mentoring
You and Jan will discuss your goals, explore ways to strengthen your creative expression, and work on organizing your time. She will help you tackle the concerns and restraints that hold you back and assist you in strategizing ways to move beyond them. She will provide tools to help you strengthen your prose or poetry, identify and clarify your subjects and themes, and better express your unique voice.
During Zoom meetings, you can discuss your creative process with Jan, and she will help you to identify your writing needs, as she provides useful exercises to heighten your skills, offer ways to explore challenges and areas of interest, and help you to move towards achieving your goals.
To email Jan about coaching, click here.
Tips
It is helpful if you clarify the kind of feedback that is most useful for you to receive before Jan begins editorial projects, manuscript evaluations, and/or coaching.
Though she cannot guarantee the publication of a manuscript or individual prose pieces and poems, Jan’s goal is to provide suggestions and edits that will lead you to pursuing an exciting new project and/or creating a stronger, more vibrant, coherent body of work in the form of a new revision, a completed manuscript, or writing fresh and daring drafts of poems.
“Jan is a remarkable teacher: wise, insightful, and encouraging. Her editorial feedback helped me refine areas of my writing that had stymied me for years, and her recommended reading selections and prompts opened new worlds of poetry as poetry opened my heart and mind to the world around me. She is a master of her craft, and I am forever grateful to have had the opportunity to work with her. ”
Rates
Manuscript consultations, development, and editing: Rates are determined on an hourly basis, and an estimate will be offered following a preliminary telephone/Zoom conversation. A 50 percent deposit is required when you submit your writing for review, and the balance is due upon Jan’s completion of the review.
Coaching and mentoring: 5 or 10 session Zoom meetings are recommended at the onset of working together. Fewer sessions can be discussed to accommodate your unique needs.
For a complimentary 15-minute conversation to discuss your writing needs and goals, please email janfreemaneditorial@gmail.com.
Congratulations to Rose Styron on the rave national attention she received for her memoir, Beyond This Harbor (Alfred A. Knopf). For a taste, click on CBS, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Progressive.
Testimonials From Writers and Poets
“Jan’s ear and her perceptive questions and suggestions were right on the mark as I worked towards the completion of my memoir Beyond This Harbor via Zoom... Jan is terrific. I highly recommend her.”
“Jan meticulously preserved the integrity of my voice in her review of my new memoir — a vital gift of her editing style, and one that I was keenly aware of as I explored my pages after her impeccable study of them. Her in-depth understanding of structure and voice was impressive. Jan helped me to flesh out underdeveloped characters, resulting in a narrative with greater depth. Her suggestions about lines, phrases, and words were very much on target. Jan’s editorial skills are excellent and her manner is gracious and encouraging. ”
“My decision to work with Jan Freeman was one of the best decisions that I have ever made in preparing a poetry manuscript. Her constructive feedback exceeded my expectations. Together we outlined a doable plan to tighten and elevate my work. Jan is a consummate professional and I consider myself fortunate to have found an editor who made me feel both seen and heard. I highly recommend Jan’s services.”
“Jan Freeman is a brilliant editor who brings her poet’s attention to the nuances, power, and impact of words to everything she touches. I can’t say enough about how skillfully she transformed my novel and, equally important, inspired and energized me to aspire to my very best self. Brava!”
“Jan’s in-depth, rigorous reading of my manuscript allowed me to understand where its emotional heart lies, and she provided me with a practical way to revise in order to bring out that heart. Jan gave me the motivation and clarity I needed to finish this project and submit it for publication. I am thrilled that it was selected for the Cowles Poetry Prize. Working with Jan got me through the final “push” needed to put together a successful manuscript. ”
“Jan’s feedback is compassionate, candid, and discerning. Whether focused on individual poems or the arc of the manuscript, her edits aim straight for the marrow. She’s a wonderful reader and mentor. She pushed me to streamline my manuscript, which has since been accepted by Salmon Poetry.”
“I love to write poems, but dread the process of ordering and culling them in a collection. I appreciate Jan’s skill in gently (but firmly) shaping a book, and I admire the care with which she treats each poem—like its own little gem in need of a polish!”
Jan is scheduling manuscript reviews and coaching for January, February, and March. Click here to contact her.