Sands Hall is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and holds an MFA in Fiction. She has taught Creative Writing for the University of Iowa and American River College, and conducts workshops for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and for University of California, Davis Extension. She is founder of and instructor for the Sierra Writers Workshop, in Nevada City, California. Her students and clients have published stories, articles, and books in a range of genres.
Published clients/students include Judith Barnes, Steve Susoyev, Barbara Fischkin, Susan McGee Britton, BB Hill, Patricia D’Alessandro, Frances Sutz Brown, Stevo Julius, Robert Q. Hoyt.
Interested authors should contact Sands regarding her availability. She may ask for a sample chapter for review. Should she decide she can be of help to you, two options are available.
Sands charges $ 90 an hour, minimum fee $180.
Some degree of line editing is included, especially where confusion may be a problem as a result of sentence structure. (More thorough line editing is available upon request; it does increase the time spent on a manuscript.)
In the margins of your manuscript Sands notes what is and what is not working, and why. Sometimes she includes short suggestions and possible solutions. These are often helpful during the rewriting process.
Your manuscript will be returned to you accompanied by extensive typewritten notes that discuss the strengths as well as the problems in the manuscript and in your writing. The critique also includes:
The critique will mention specific pages where your writing is serving you well, but will also point out where and how craft could be improved. The notes may discuss structure, plot, your use of language, your characters, point of view, sense of place, etc., with these objectives in mind: Are these elements serving the story you are telling, and the way in which you are telling it, as effectively as possible? Occasionally Sands will enclose materials-essays, reading suggestions, excerpts from a book on grammar-which may be helpful.
If desired or needed, a discussion of the critique can be arranged. This can be in-person or by phone, and is billed by the quarter hour. The client is responsible for the cost of the phone call.
A detailed invoice, suitable for tax purposes, is included.
Sands does not fact check.
She does not refer clients to agents.
She will, however, take a look at a submission letter and/or synopsis, with the same attention, and for the same fee, as detailed above.
In general-but this is an approximation only--the fee averages out to about $2.50-$3:00 a page. Sometimes, especially in a long novel, it's less. Often- especially with short stories, poems, essays, or when more line editing is required or desired-the cost can be quite a bit more. This is an average cost per page.
To utilize this service, please contact Sands. Be advised that her editing schedule is often full (although she will do her best to refer you to another editor) and that she will often ask to see a sample chapter before she takes on the whole manuscript. She usually manages to turn a given manuscript around within the month of receiving it.
CONTACT
You can email Sands at :
sands "at sign" sandshall "dot" com
The email address has been deconstructed in order to foil spam
