ASSESSING/EDITING
I will read your manuscript with complete attention and then annotate it forensically, adding to this a summary report dealing with the more general issues of character, style, structure. I will fully engage with the spirit and intent of your work. I am equally concerned with the general narrative flow of the work and its expression at sentence level.
Simply email me at peterdkenneally@gmail.com with an overview of your book and a 3000 word sample of your writing. If I think I’ll be able to help you, we can work out a fee and time-frame for your particular project
The basic schedule is S1600 for a ‘standard size’ ms of 80,000 words. For works over 80,000 words it’s $120 for each extra 10,000 words, For smaller works, I am happy to discuss fees for individual projects.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME
I came to Melbourne from London in 1985. I started writing in earnest in the Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT in 1992 and had poetry and short stories published widely from then on. From 2008 I began reviewing for The Age, and then extensively for ABR, The Australian, Cordite, The Big Issue and others, as well as establishing a freelance writing and editing business with my wife, journalist and author Kate Cole-Adams.
My manuscript assessment work developed out of reviewing and also from attending two of Antoni Jach’s legendary masterclasses and realising how much I enjoyed, and was suited to, helping writers make the best of their manuscripts
I am currently completing a memoir (currently called ‘The Welfare State’), an extract from which was shortlisted in the Lord Mayor’s Awards for writing in Melbourne in 2020. Parts of it also appear in this anthology from 2023, edited by Lenore Manderson: https://www.shawlinepublishing.com.au/our-titles/display/400-imperfect-memories
TESTIMONIALS
‘To have an assessment with Peter is like working with a master sculptor, He takes your manuscript and moulds it, chiselling and excising the bits that don’t work, are dead on the page, or just obscure what already exists. He will coax your ms to be more of itself and remove the blah that we all write but are often too invested to see.
Be prepared to be challenged. With my work Peter intuited in the early days that a different voice was sitting in my narrative, which eventually emerged and is what is now being published.
Georgina Banks, author of Back To Bangka, Penguin, 2023
‘A beautiful writer and a thoughtful reader, Peter’s feedback was wonderfully detailed and sent me off in the exact direction I needed in order to get my book finished. Highly recommend.”
Elise Esther Hearst, author of One Day We’re All Going To Die’, Harlequin Books, 2023
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