Pencil Princess Editing is committed to quick, careful, considerate critique.
As a once and possibly future English teacher, Rachel has a strong understanding of English grammar. She also has an eye for picky details and extensive experience working with young and non-native writers.
As an avid reader, she loves stories. That love translates into an instinct for good narrative.
Hire Rachel as an editor
Rachel prefers to work at a per-word rate of 1/2 cent (US) for fiction and 1 cent (US) for nonfiction (for one editing pass), but is open to negotiation, especially for those who are just starting their writing journeys or who would like a long-term working relationship.
Since finding an editor who works well with one’s own writing style and process can be a tricky thing, Rachel is happy to do a free sample edit of up to 1/10th the size of the project or 2000 words, whichever is smaller.
Rachel’s favorite genres (to read, write, and edit) are YA of any kind, fantasy, science fiction, historical, and sweet romance. She also has a soft spot for anything with Chinese, immigrant, or cross-cultural themes. She prefers working on fiction, but has some interest in Christian nonfiction and nonfiction about parenting (especially adoption). If you have a project that fits any of these categories, she’d love to work on it with you. If you have a project that doesn’t fit any of these categories, it might still be worth checking (Rachel has wide-ranging interests and reading habits.)
Recommendations from Editing Clients:
“Very flexible and easy to deal with, while providing valuable feedback to the project. Final result was excellent. Would recommend to anyone in search for a talented editor.”
“Super fast worker, extremely reliable. I loved the feedback she gave me on the book, it was very constructive. I would love to work with her again.”
“Careful and useful work from my editor, recommended :)”
“Very efficient and enjoyed working with her. Her professionalism is top notch”
Editing Services Offered
Full-Service Editing
The Pencil Princess Workshop offers a full-service edit that focuses on getting a piece of writing ready for publication. This involves a bit of content editing, a bit more line editing, and a copy edit. Rachel is occasionally also willing to help with formatting for Kindle or E-book.
Pricing for two full edits of the document, (one that focuses on content, and the second that focuses on details) runs at 1 cent per word for fiction and 2 cents per word for non-fiction.
Light Content Editing
Rachel’s content editing is light. She mentions continuity problems. (For example, if the character was wearing a red shirt a page ago, and now she’s wearing a blue one, but she hasn’t changed clothes or had a scene break, Rachel will pop in a comment noting the issue.) Similarly, Rachel notes factual errors. (“Sorry, but I don’t think people can see the Golden Gate Bridge from LA.”)
She’ll also comment on things that seem unrealistic or confusing. (“How exactly did she punch him without dropping the carton of milk, lunch meat, and cheese that she’d just pulled from the fridge?”)
These suggestions will be in comment bubbles, not the actual text.
Rachel doesn’t typically comment on overall plot structure or character arcs unless an author has specifically asked for that, or unless the plot/character has taken a turn that seems completely out of place for them or for the story.
If an author would like a more significant content edit, they should indicate this (and plan for at least two editing passes, to bring a fine polish to text that has significant changes).
Line Editing
Line editing involves cleaning up unclear or clunky phrasing and pointing out style issues like cliched phrases, mixed metaphors, and overused or repeated words and phrases.
Usually, these issues will be highlighted, and suggestions will be in comment bubbles, not the actual text. Sometimes, for awkward sentences, Rachel offers a couple of alternatives that flow better. (Authors sometimes choose one of these, and sometimes choose an entirely different way to solve the problem.)
Copy Editing
Copy editing cleans up grammatical errors, misspellings, typos, and other picky little problems. Rachel usually corrects these in the text, marking the changes so that the author can accept or reject them.
Though this is the easiest type of editing to explain, it is not necessarily the easiest to do because it requires careful attention to every word (and punctuation mark and space) in the document.