Recently I posted an offer from Kristi Holl to edit and critique your Children's-YA manuscripts. Today I want to introduce you to yet another special person, who has a sharp eye and critical mind to help improve your labour of love.
Meet Ursula,
Ursula deals with YA, and adult manuscripts.
Now before you read her little excerpt, allow me to add this...when she talks about riding the train for 2 hours a day, it's to go and do what she does best...work with documents. She spends her days dealing with more formal (boring) words on paper...and has been doing so for many, many years. She's very good at what she does and in applying her technical skills and eagle eye to your manuscripts, you come out with a polished, professional document.
She works at the rate of $1/page, and asks for a deposit, but she will work out the details with you.
Here's what she has to say...
I love books. I have loved them as a teenager, burning my blanket with the lamp as I hid under it so I could read way past curfew. I loved them as a woman in labour, escaping to medieval Japan, far away from labour pains, and I now enjoy riding in the train for two hours a day being able to indulge in my passion for reading. They bring me comfort, take me away to another world, distract and excite me, they inspire me to do and be more by giving me ideas for my own evolution. In short, books are a huge part of my life.
When my best friend began writing, I had the privilege and pleasure of following the story as it was unfolding. In the process, I discovered that I actually had a very good antenna for grammatical errors, bad formulations, and an unerring eye for typos. These things just bothered me. They ripped me out of the world the book had brought me into and stopped the dream. My friend appreciated the input I could give her, and I think I have contributed a little bit to the excellent book she has since published. I have read some of the other books of new writers, beginners and more seasoned artists, and, because of my electronic reader, I have often downloaded free and cheap books. And I have discovered a whole plague of typos, errors, and bad writing. This never happened before the days of self-publishing and computers. Things like that would never ever have been published. And I believe they still shouldn’t be dumped on an unsuspecting public. I can read a mediocre or slightly boring story, or one that I do not agree with, if it is superbly written and in a beautiful language. But give me the best, most suspenseful, emotional, descriptive narrative, and after a few pages of silly, unnecessary mistakes that keep throwing me off the path, I will put the book down and never finish it. I would like to offer you my services to read your stories before you send them off into the world, and to correct simple typos, grammatical errors, repetitions, and other unnecessary evils. I will suggest small changes if I find a lack of clarity, or some clearly unintentional confusion, and make sure that your future readers will get the full enjoyment out of your works of love. If you need more information or want to “try me out” with a few pages or short stories, please feel free to contact me at writerfix@yahoo.ca , and I will show you what a difference I can make.
Oh, this is a great post. I will definetely email Ursula.
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