The Short Version

I learned storytelling the hard way – alone in a crumbling French cottage with no teachers, no community, and definitely no clue. Now, I give writers the vital insights I lacked.

The Slightly Longer Version

When I moved to rural France and started writing, I assumed passion (and talent) alone would carry me.

It didn’t.

Once I turned my first pieces over to an online writing community I’d eagerly signed up to, I was shocked. The wonder of my genius turned out just to be common newbie gaffs, and the multitude of writing techniques I was advised to employ was mind-boggling.

It was a gut punch that people didn’t love the pieces I’d put so much effort into, but I was determined to learn how to do it, and how to do it really well.

So I became my own teacher – dissecting novels, critiquing other writers, writing anything and everything I could, running a writing group for equally stranded locals, and slowly untangling why some stories work while others flop.

Then I got a front-row seat to the real problem: thousands of manuscripts as a first reader and editor for literary magazines. I saw brilliant ideas drowned in unclear stakes, gorgeous prose wasted on meandering plots, and writers baffled by silence from agents.

These insights filtered down into my local group, and this soon became regular workshops, then manuscript assessments and freelancing. I started teaching online, and then my senior editor asked me to design a course from scratch to train our first readers on how to read like a pro, diagnose flaws and communicate them respectfully. And teach it.

My best bits?

Empathy, for one. I’ve been where you are, stared down the same blank pages, the same rejections, the same “why isn’t this working?” frustrations. But I’ve also been on the other side of the fence, dissecting the slush pile. I bring that surgical precision into the mix with an expert eye on what a story needs, vs what the ego desires, filling the gap of editor silence with editing truths.

No jargon, no magic tricks; just the clear, actionable fixes I wish I’d had when I was learning alone in that crumbling cottage. Topped with the knowledge of what aspects result in rejections.