When you hire me as your editor or writing coach, you receive my close, exclusive attention — and my years of experience and training as an editor, a teacher, and a writer. I never subcontract the work out to other editors, and I don’t rely on AI to edit your work. The only digital tool I use is spell check in Microsoft Word. I also mark all edits made in your manuscript with track changes so that you can consider them, accept them, reject them, or adapt them as you see fit.
I also do not edit AI-generated work. Why? Two reasons:
• Learning how to write helps us learn how to think, and paying attention to word choice, syntax, images, and the rhythms of language allows us to deeply imagine our fictional characters and stories. All that nerdy attention to words feeds our imagination. When we depend on AI to write for us, it seems to me, we thwart our creativity, and we fail to nurture our own unique voices.
• I’m concerned about the writers who hire me: using AI would put them at risk for copyright infringement, and submissions of their work would likely be rejected if the manuscript was flagged by AI-detection tools.
Again, the only digital tool I use is spell-check in Microsoft Word. It’s fine if my clients run spell-check and grammar-check in Word before sending me their manuscripts. Online advice about grammar and syntax, such as information available in university writing labs, is also acceptable as long as the online resource does not automatically rewrite sentences.
I also make a concerted effort to protect clients’ work from AI. I turn off AI features in Zoom and Google, for example.
Any questions or concerns? Please email me so we can discuss them. Thanks!