Margaret A. Harrell

Hunter often said was the best editor he ever worked with and they were close friends—William McKeen, author of Outlaw Journalist

I have been an editor for decades. I get very absorbed in it. Each work is personal and receives my undivided attention. In my days at Random House I copyedited some New York Times best sellers and other award-winning books; some were reviewed on the front cover of the Times Sunday book review section. Yet because I love the work if I think we are a fit, my prices are reasonable.

WATCH YOUR BOOK COME INTO SHAPE

I love to see a book come into shape. An idea emerge out of a paragraph where it wasn’t there before, where the paragraph was pretty drab. And suddenly it has a lot to say.

Whether you’re a polished writer and need “final edits” or someone who has barely started the book and needs developmental editing, I can help. I think I learned the most about editing right in the early years while at Random House. For instance, one author, a painter, told me, “I don’t understand words.” That was apparent. I would see a sentence that didn’t make sense and discover, by asking what he intended to say, that a fascinating idea was buried in the words that sat on the page without communicating. In the end, he thanked me for “a prodigy of rewriting almost beyond belief.” But it was his book, his ideas. He didn’t know how to put them into words.

This is an extreme case. For the most part, the author has a knack with language and just needs help in refining it—polishing and professionalizing it in an authentic voice. Whenever I tackle a manuscript, I never lose sight of the fact—most importantly—that there’s a voice waiting to be supported, an author whose voice needs to be brought out, made to stand out. If it’s not your voice that speaks, the reader will probably lose interest; in any case you will not have the same level of satisfaction and sense of fulfillment. For one of the main reasons to write is to go through the creative process, wrestle with material, sweat out the blank moments, and eventually proudly offer a completed book to an audience. I can help you do that—with the highest attention to ethics. Read about my editing services below.

Below is a list of various levels of editing you can choose from.  

• telephone consultation
• manuscript evaluation
• developmental editing—if your book is not yet finished
• partial or comprehensive editing
• copyediting and line editing or final edits

Once you contact me, for free I’ll look at a few chapters and give you a tailor-made assessment of how much editing I think the book needs and what the fee will be.

Developmental editing is the most extensive. In that, I work with you while you are writing. Do you need input on the concept and structure (nonfiction) or the plot, pacing, characterization (fiction)? If so, you want developmental editing.

Partial or Comprehensive editing is if your manuscript is already finished, yet needs to be looked over with an editor’s eye.

Copyediting, including line edits, is appropriate if your manuscript is finished and the writing is fairly polished. This is  where I look at  grammar, punctuation, inconsistencies, light line editing.

Prices typically involve a flat project rate, so that you pay less than my hourly rate. Each fee is customized on the basis of manuscript length and readiness for publication.

POST EDITING OPTION: After the editing is done, what happens next? What type of publication are you aiming for: traditional or self-publishing? I can help you see the options for each. I’ll offer you some free tips on indie publishing if that’s your route. If you want to search for an agent, I can give you some tips or you can choose to have me edit your Query Letter and Proposal.

Nonfiction  and Fiction Projects

In the Works:

I wanted  to let you know that CEO Jason Pegler of Chipmunka asked me to share any new manuscripts with him so I showed him Everybody’s Exceptional, Including You!  He loved it . . . I will be receiving an advance copy any day now in paperback!  Yes! . . . Thank you sooo for your editing help on this. It made such a difference.—Suzanne V. Brown, psychologist, former Vice President of the Exceptional Human Experience Network 

In the Works, Cover Letter and Proposal:

I am delighted with all your red mark changes (needed sunglasses there at first!) and have a completed clean copy . . . In the book proposal . . . I feel it’s best to get you back on the clock to buff, polish and shine the product to razzle dazzle the Publisher hook, line and sinker.—Denise Kane, Butterfly  Reiki founder

Testimonials, Reviews, Awards

Nonfiction Developmental Editing

My professional and loving editor, Margaret Harrell,  was always there when I needed her. She made the solo job of a writer become a partnership.

—Jonette Crowley

Author of Soul Body Fusion: The Missing Piece for Healing and Beyond. Translated into Dutch, German, Romanian, Norwegian, Estonian, Polish, Danish, Swedish, and counting

Review

I was mesmerized and transformed with Ms. Crowley’s energy that permeated the pages . . .

Inspiration

It is not only what you produce in your life, but how your greater life produces a greater YOU . . . that in turn produces a greater world, – “MARK” as Channeled by Jonette

A very special acknowledgment to my editor, Margaret Harrell, with an expertise and unique talent, no doubt burgeoning through her fascinating life experiences and working with truly notable writers, goes beyond the call of duty. Fate brought her to my assistance.

—Patrick Andendall

Author of Stupidparty: Math v. Myth, the 2015 Award Winner of the National Indie Excellence Book Award (Politics)

Reviews:

It is possibly the funnest book with an agenda ever published.—Breeni Books

A brilliant book, complete with clickable details to verify the author’s veracity.—Thom Hartmann, New York Times best-selling author of The Crash of 2016

A return author, Patrick has a new political book out in 2016: Who Is Jeb!!!: John Ellis “Jeb” Bush and his Horrendously Horrible Histories. This project, like the first, involved “developmental editing”; in the process, Who is Jeb? doubled in size.

 

I cannot thank you enough for working with me.

—Venus Soileau

Author of This Is Not for You—a memoir

 

 

The novels below were already finished when they came to me in manuscript. They could get straight to copyediting, which might range from character, plot, and language questions to excellence of writing, fact checking, consistencies, and the minutiae of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Whatever the degree of copyediting needed (heavy or light), a reader can tell whether the book went through that process.

Thank you so much for this lovely voyage! . . . I learned so much . . .

Vesa M. Lumielle

Author of Soul of the Sun—poetry and magical realism

Review:

“After all, we live the illusion of reality” is the sentence that I would say sums the book up best. Reads very well, and poetry is magnificent.

I’d like to thank two individuals who helped Essie’s House to life . . . Margaret Harrell—whose enthusiasm, insights and suggestions helped tighten the story and smooth the rough edges.

—Robert Meyerson

 

 

You’ve been such a big help and I appreciate it so much.

Miguel Lasala included in his novel an “Editor’s Note” by me (he wrote), to add to the Hunter Thompson/Fear and Loathing-like flavor.

Review:

Rodeo of Doom . . .  author Miguel Lasala reveals his craft by intricately weaving in fine details for his readers and keeps you anxiously anticipating what will happen next.

 

The End of Obscenity: The Trials of Lady Chatterley, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill by the Lawyer Who Defended Them is dear to my heart. Random House considered it an important book, and to edit it, I was “loaned out”—assigned to go to the law offices of the high-profile author, Charles (Cy) Rembar, every day for roughly a couple of months. There, I sat at a big table with Rembar, and morning to night (ordering in lunch and taking an evening break for dinner at a nearby Sixth Avenue restaurant), we organized his pile of chapters, which began as stand-alone texts, into a flowing book. It’s also because of Rembar, in part, that I wound up having a private  conversation with his first cousin Norman Mailer in a Greenwich Village loft and pondered the prospect of editing Mailer’s introduction. Read my blog on “The Time I Almost Edited Norman Mailer.”

Acknowledgments: Charles (CY) Rembar

To: Margaret Ann Harrell, a gifted book-tuner—a lass with a delicate ear

Review:

Rembar’s book deals not with the why of obscenity laws but with the how, and as a result often has a freshness that little recent writing on this subject can match. Rembar’s is still the best book on that kind of censorship.

I love helping you improve your craft.

“What we have to be aware of is that the creation of serious literature—whatever the degree of collaboration between author and editor—is the result of enormously concentrated mental and aesthetic effort. If it is reduced to a series of narrative effects slapped on to paper or screen, if it comes to be seen simply as one among many interchangeable ways to ingest a story, it will soon begin to look like a very poor slice of the leisure industry indeed.”—Alex Clark, The Guardian, “The Lost Art of Editing,” February 11, 2011