Ginny MacKenzie 
Writing Tutor
Specializing in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry.

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   Services​

1. Editing:  Editing your writing is an ongoing job that requires particular skills. Your voice and vision sculpt your story, poem or novel.  Developing your style comes with it. Much thought is given to how you can best communicate your work so it offers insight and direction into the writer's world.  WB Yeats wrote:  "People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind." If we know what he means, we might just discard the ordinary and search for the extraordinary.  Readers can be lost in words that are often there because the writer doesn't yet know what he wants to say.  Editing often requires digging up unnecessary words to get to the beautiful language underneath

2. Establishing meaning through imagery and metaphor:  Understanding your evolving style.  The use of sound to create emotion.  Add fresh description and metaphor to create pictures that open the landscapes presented in the work.  Employing color helps your reader "see" your scenes so they can relate to the text.  Writing with a painter's palette is helpful here.  Make images, not just adding adjectives.

3. Effective Plot and Character Development:  Creating characters that are unique and  believable, if the right details are the readers will decide what is the takeaway.  Trust them to understand why your story needs to be told.  If your idea is plot driven, details need exaggerated  through a mix of odd and common happenings.  Good writers everything  around them, including their families, their memories, their hometowns and their opinions.  We write our lives.  

4. Fact vs Fiction:  Relating personal stories and essays in an autobiographical genre is a popular forum for contemporary writers.  This allows for an expansion of  your experience into psychological drama.  Telling your story can be comprised of all the human defects, harsh environments or a state of mind.  Sensual facts work here.

5. Overcoming writer's block:  Learning to adopt the right cure is an art in itself.  As Flannery O' Connor said, "If I had waited for inspiration I 'd still be waiting."  There are exercises to overcome the writer's demons.  Writer's block doesn't haunt writers who have the tools to conquer it.

6. Mastering concise use of language:  Knowing the craft of writing poems is a necessary skill.  A fresh metaphor is genius. Read poems of writers out loud, notice sound, rhythm and internal rhyme.  Engage all the senses.  Learn to say a lot with very few words.  These  ideas also apply to fiction but with characters, dialog and plot.

7. Publishing Guidance:  Writers' organizations list names of literary magazines and journals that accept submissions.  It's good to know what individual  magazines prefer in terms of genres and styles.  Small press book  publishers also accept manuscripts, but there are varying processes for submissions.  Contests are also sponsored by independent presses.  When you feel ready, it is important to build up your career by searching for publication.

Scheduling First Meeting: I can help you through tutoring, coaching, and editing.  You may schedule a free meeting by emailing me a work sample of a few pages.  I will comment on it and return it to you.  Then, if you like, we can schedule a single meeting or a discounted package of ten meetings.  For these meetings,  I will comment in the margins of your pages, and include a separate, more expansive response to your work.