—Yearning to advance your craft?—
Or, deadlines pressing?  Competition stiff?
Self-confidence taken a hike? Yikes!
Help is here . . .

In the Woods Editing! is an editorial, consulting, and coaching service for writers of nonfiction (or creative nonfiction*), be it doctoral dissertation, term paper, literary manuscript, magazine article, personal family history, business flyer—even query or cover letter. Before delivering up your work to the fates, boost your chances of success with a professional tweaking. The process involves a combination of traditional hard-copy editing and phone consultation—unless, of course, you live in western Montana and then we can go for lunch.

Feedback can range from general manuscript evaluation to help with structural continuity to line-by-line editing for clarity, tone, rhythm, syntax, grammar, and punctuation . . . always with careful attention to bolstering your writing confidence and cultivating your own voice. For the aspiring writer, I offer one-on-one developmental edits that serve to strengthen a range of skills at a pace faster than can be accommodated in the atmosphere of a classroom, and without the commute. Fees vary with the extent of the feedback required.

In addition to editing and critiquing, I mentor in aspects of the writing life, the art of researching, the function of serial drafts, the secrets of self-editing, capturing cadence and flow, and writing great beginnings.

Send me an email today! (A heads-up phone call doesn't hurt either.) Please include:

• a brief synopsis of your project (not more than a paragraph)
• a short description of your writing background and career goals
• any specific time frame for completion

With longer works, I’ll provide gratis a full edit and critique of your first two pages, along with an informal estimate. From there, we can decide together if we make a promising team, and then firm things up.

Kathleen Meyer
406-642-3675
inthewoods@montana.com

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*Definition of creative nonfiction:

Creative nonfiction is frequently referred to as a lively and fashionable “new genre,” but I prefer to think of it as a “cross-genre” or, as others have suggested, a “movement.” Its genre category is not all that remains unsettled. Other appellations—including “new journalism,” “new nonfiction,” and “literary journalism”—have been put forward, seemingly often as mollification for those finding the term “creative nonfiction” a dangerous oxymoron. Yet, whatever its final genre or name, any newness resides purely in the contemporary labels, as the form dates back to the French essayist Michel Eyquiem de Montaigne of the late 1500s. Creative nonfiction is written most often in first-person point of view—though not egotistically so—and with a voice that, to varying degrees, is personal.

Writers in pursuit of creative nonfiction should plan to embrace, with earnestness, one of its more exacting modern-day definitions: factual literary prose. In other words, the creative part does not come with license to invent, as do the fiction forms of the short story and novel, but rather with the idea to take the facts sought in journalism and steep them imaginatively in the techniques of fiction (scene, dialogue, intimate detail, flashback, metaphor, and so forth), the analytic explorations of essay, and the lyricism of poetry. The goal is to enliven writing, short of straying into concoction and deceit.

Lee Gutkind, the founder of modern creative nonfiction and also the founder and editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction (www.creativenonfiction.org), has this to say about it:

We are attempting, as writers, to show imag-
ination, to demonstrate artistic and intellectual inventiveness and still remain true to the factual integrity of the piece we are writing.

[Creative nonfiction] allows a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined word play of a poet and the analytical modes of an essayist.

Whether your interest is in personal essay or memoir; nature, humor, travel, or adventure writing; autobiography, historiography, biography; science writing, journalism, war correspondence, exposé; even poetry, or some hybrid of the preceding, you can incorporate creative nonfiction.

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