More About Kristin
What I like most about editing:
I have always loved the written word, its playfulness and intricacies, and working with writers to snap each one into just the right spot. Editing indulges both my active imagination, as when I'm working with a writer on her themes and character development, and my nitpicking urges, as when I'm proofreading.
My best advice to writers:
Read, and read books similar to the ones you write. Lose yourself in another art form: see new gestures your characters can make by watching modern dance; learn about new colors at a museum or gallery; taste through your mouth—and your nose!—at a cooking class. Remember the difference between telling a story and telling an anecdote.
My favorite genres to edit:
My heart for editing, reviewing, and writing lies with fiction, particularly mysteries, lush literary (see the first book I'm currently reading below), work along the fabulist continuum. I also enjoy nonfiction that is just as layered and detailed as fiction, such as Daniel Bergner's The Other Side of Desire and Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic.
Number of years I've been editing:
I've been a full-time freelance editor since 2003. But even before that, the written word—and tweaking it—was always a part of my work.
Edit hard copy or on-screen:
I prefer to edit on hard copy, but because that's not the best environmental or economic decision, the only type of editing I MUST do on paper is proofreading. My eyes haven't evolved to catch all those "little" details on screen.
My "must have" writing reference books:
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose and Chicago Manual of Style
Favorite background music when I edit:
I grew up doing my homework—and my own fiction writing—in a house where talk radio was on on weekdays, and television shows and football were on on weeknights and weekends. So a lot of times still I will listen to NPR or I'll put a show on, not to watch but to have the voices in the background. When I do want music, though, interestingly I go with either instrumentals or songs in languages I don't know.
Scene outside the window where I edit:
I have dedicated office space, but I will also sometimes take advantage of the freedom of movement freelancing affords me. But whether I'm behind a desk, in a comfy library chair, or perched on a cafe stool, I'm usually in front of a view of some part of Portland, Oregon.
Favorite quotes:
Two quotes I enjoy come from poems. From Primus St. John's "Lyric 12": "I believe in myself slowly. / It takes all of the doubt I've got. / It takes my wonder." And from "Used Book Store" by Charles Simic: "Lovers hold hands in never-opened novels. / The page with a recipe for cucumber soup is missing. / A dead man writes of his happy childhood on a farm, / Of riding in a balloon over Lake Erie."
Memorable fictional character:
Dorrie, from the Doorie the Little Witch series by Patricia Coombs
Most recent blog/website I bookmarked:
World Pulse
Currently reading:
Sometimes I'm a one-book reader; other times I have several going at once, one for each room of my house or each mood. I'm in the latter currently with my new friends The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer, The Legal Limit by Martin Clark, Naked in Death by J. D. Robb, and Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. I try to keep my "currently reading" shelf on Goodreads up-to-date.
|
Editing fiction and nonfiction for a variety of clients—among them individual authors, Coffee House Press, Simon & Schuster, HarperOne, the National Youth Leadership Council, Portland State University, and Bitch magazine—Kristin Thiel loves the written word, its playfulness and intricacies, and working with writers to snap each one into just the right spot. Kristin draws additional editing support from her work as fiction acquisitions editor at the online journal WritersDojo.org; as book reviewer for a variety of publications, including the Oregonian, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Rain Taxi; and her own work as a writer. Even before she knew how to form the letters of the alphabet, Kristin was "writing," dictating stories to her mom to put on paper. Later she would scarf through meals to get back to what her characters were up to on paper, and she read all the time, even while brushing her teeth. In 2006 she won the Elisabeth A. McPherson Award for Women Writers and in 2007 the Ooligan Editors' Choice short story contest. Her story "Pilgrim for Hire" was published in VoiceCatcher 2, and an excerpt from that story is in the reference book Don't Sabotage Your Submission: Save Your Manuscript from Turning Up D.O.A.