Manuscript Consultation: Short stories, Personal Essays, Memoir with Elissa Schappell
Manuscript Consultation: Short stories, Personal Essays, Memoir with Elissa Schappell
Writers work alone and in the dark. The process of crafting a piece of writing that generates meaning and emotion, a work capable of nothing less than dreaming the reader into a world entirely of the writer’s making, is a daunting task. For as vast and mysterious as the levers of the writer’s imagination may be, the only tools at the writer’s disposal are paltry. Something to write with and something to write on. The only other thing the writer requires is a reader. Someone to witness the work and offer feedback. Inevitably, regardless of the quality of that feedback, the writer is dissatisfied. The writer suspects and rightly so, that there are issues. There are always issues, and the writer, regardless of how skilled they may be, cannot see them. They know this, and it’s maddening. Sometimes the issues are related to craft. The structure isn’t helping the story tell itself. The pacing is out of whack. The point of view is fuzzy. Other times the problem isn’t on the page but in the writer themselves. They don’t what the story is or why they’re telling it. They can’t recognize what is most alive in their work. If you find yourself in such a place, I offer my help. For years I have been helping writers in just this way. Helping them to locate the beating heart in their stories and strategize solutions for revision that work in the direction of their strengths.
You have several options.
Option1.
You receive notes on the text: (queries, comments and suggested edits) an editorial letter and an hour-long conference via Zoom/FaceTime/telephone to discuss the work’s strengths and weaknesses, big picture issues and avenues to pursue in revision. $450
Option 2.
You receive an editorial letter, and an hour-long conference via Zoom/FaceTime/telephone to discuss the work’s strengths and weaknesses, big picture issues and avenues to pursue in revision. $350
Option 3.
Your manuscript is returned to you with margin notes and an editorial letter addressing matters of craft. $250.
Option 4.
An hour-long conference via Zoom/FaceTime/telephone to discuss the work’s strengths and weaknesses, big picture issues and avenues to pursue in revision. $250
My rates are based on twenty, double-spaced, twelve-point type pages, or $250 an hour for longer works.
Elissa Schappell is founding editor of Tin House, a former Senior Editor of The Paris Review, and a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair. She is the author of two novels-in-stories, Use Me, a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award and Blueprints for Building Better Girls, and co-editor with Jenny Offill of two anthologies, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything. Her short stories, essays and reviews have appeared in places such as The Paris Review, Bomb and the New York Times Book Review. She has taught in the MFA fiction writing program at Columbia, the low-residency MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte, NC, NYU and Brooklyn College.
