I am currently taking on clients as a freelance editor for projects in the Humanities. I offer line-editing as well as developmental editing and coaching. Please contact me at daniellh [at] princeton [dot] edu if you are interested in discussing working together.
You can read more about my editorial projects here.
Editorial Philosophy
While I bring my interdisciplinary expertise in literature, philosophy, and critical theory to bear on your work as appropriate, my primary aim as an editor is to help you carry out your intellectual project as well as possible. Close listening and close reading are thus the basic pillars of my editing practice.
In this same spirit, I offer a high degree of tailoring to the needs and sensibility of the individual client – e.g., whether you prefer more “streamlined” or more “expansive” edits; whether you require a more “analytic” editing style focused on the fine details of argumentation or a more “synthetic” editing style focused on the articulation of overarching hypotheses; whether you find meetings to be beneficial or you find in-document edits and comments to be sufficient; whether you would like guidance in establishing a timeline for your writing or prefer a more autonomous approach.
Here are of some of my further general commitments and strategies as an editor and coach:
- Close reading and revision: the greatest conceptual stakes are often lurking in the small linguistic details; one of my jobs as an editor is to help you recognize, tease out, and amplify the powerful but unavowed insights of your own prose.
- Helping you get (back) in touch with pleasure, excitement, and curiosity in your writing practice; fighting against shame, intellectual inhibition, and hyperbolic self-criticism.
- Listening: if we meet via Zoom, the first premise is that the very act of articulating your intellectual project for an engaged listener will allow you to clarify and sharpen your vision.
- “Dailiness”: the establishment of a regular writing routine, multiple days per week, even if the time-windows are small.
- Following from “dailiness,” matching manageable “chunks” of writing to manageable “chunks” of time.