Writing Archives - Page 9 of 13

Things I’m Writing About, Editing, and Reading This Week: May 12, 2015 Edition

Sink hole image courtesy of Florida Memory on Flickr.

Things I’m Writing About, Editing, and Reading This Week

(A new feature, updated weekly.)

Writing about. . . Electronics and engineering equipment for a client’s e-learning module

. . . and heartbreak for a songwriting class assignment (Recommended: Coursera’s Berklee School of Music songwriting class. You don’t need to know anything about music, and it’s free.)

. . . and sink holes for a short story I’ve been working on, and cursed fibers and crochet for a feature film script based on my short

Critiquing. . . GIRLS for a friend (a spec script for a contest)

Reading. . . Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl for book club

On the horizon: corporate copy, plus something from the book world.

Happy writing, editing, and reading to you.

– Kristen

Client Praise: “I will be a medical student in the fall.”

by Kristen

Last summer, a new client contacted me through my website. His need: an exceptional personal statement for his medical school applications. For nearly a decade he’d been trying to fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor, but health and financial setbacks had made him a nontraditional candidate, easy to overlook.

A career mentor suggested he hire a professional editor. He Googled and he found me. We worked together over a two-week period, passing drafts and notes back and forth. I read through a small but promising mountain of raw material and picked the most compelling parts of his personal story: anecdotes that emphasized his perseverance, compassion, real world work experience, and commitment to medicine. The results, as of this winter:

I gained an acceptance at ____ NYC. This was a school you helped me with! Thank you very much! I have gotten 4 interview requests. I turned down one, and have one planned in March. Overall, I cannot thank you enough! I am so lucky to have found you. I will be a medical student in the fall. If not in NYC then somewhere else.

What a rush, knowing that a simple edit can have such a huge impact on someone’s life.

Do you need help finding a common thread or a compelling story in your career experiences? I’m available to critique, edit, and coach your professional narrative, personal statement, executive summary, or LinkedIn profile. To see Testimonials on how I’ve helped others clarify their career stories, click here.

Author Interview: Mark Rubinstein

by Kristen

I’m pleased to share my second author interview. Last year, I worked with Mark Rubinstein, MD to help him promote his first novel, Mad Dog House, which went on to become a Foreword Book of the Year finalist. Rubinstein’s second thriller, Love Gone Mad, came out this September. What many readers don’t know is that before he turned to fiction, Rubinstein wrote and co-authored several nonfiction books about medicine. I asked Rubinstein about his experiences co-authoring nonfiction. We also talked about his new novel and what’s next for him as a writer.