Walter D.

I edit books for a living: developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, and ghostwriting, across fiction, memoir, and nonfiction. Twenty-five years in, Top Rated with 100% Job Success, and a traditionally published memoirist. My career began under the mentorship of Frank E. Taylor, a former chief editor at McGraw Hill. Over his career Frank edited some of the biggest names of the twentieth century, George Orwell and Ralph Ellison among them. He taught me to read a manuscript from an acquiring editor's point of view: does it deliver on its promise, hold the reader, earn its ending? I've applied that lens to every book since. Developmental editing is the deep work: structure, pacing, character, voice, what's missing, what's not earning its place. You get an editorial letter, margin comments, and a revision roadmap that tells you where to start. Line editing happens at the sentence level. I'll wake up the drowsy passages and tune the ones singing off-key, all while keeping your voice intact. Copy editing is the final polish: grammar, syntax, consistency, and continuity, tracked on a style sheet, the details that make a manuscript ready for publication. Ghostwriting is confidential and collaborative. I've ghostwritten a published trade nonfiction title and worked behind the scenes with writers across genres. Your voice, your book. I do the heavy lifting. If your draft was AI-assisted and reads like it was written by a very confident robot, I can fix that too. I've built a working method for finding algorithmic rhythms in prose and rewriting them into a voice only a human could own. Some of my clients write technical books. I've edited geologists, neuroscientists, attorneys, and psychologists, and on that work your terminology survives the edit intact while the reading around it gets cleaner. My own first book, In My Father's Arms (University of Wisconsin Press), was praised by Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard and by Edmund White, and the Oxford American named it one of the best Southern books. A recent Upwork client: "It is obvious I have found a master writer who is also versant in the publication world. The few writers I have hired through UpWork have been a mixed bag, but mostly disappointing. You are a stark exception." If you'd like to see how I work before committing, send a few pages and I'll do a short sample edit so you can judge the fit on your own manuscript. I'm a member of the Authors Guild, which vets for professional publishing credentials, and the Editorial Freelancers Association. If we work together, I'll stay in touch with you throughout the process. Send me a message and tell me what you're working on.