Laura Jaramillo
Developmental Editor
Working with Scholars and Creative Writers
I help writers build the strongest possible foundations for their book projects, proposals, articles, and creative writing manuscripts. Starting a long-form writing project and seeing it through can be a confusing, even isolating process no matter how many times you’ve done it. I guide you through the most difficult parts of realizing your creative vision—organizing ideas, setting priorities, finding the right tone to connect with your desired audience —so that your finished work exceeds your expectations. I believe that the best writing comes from knowing when to follow your hunches and when to cut material when you’ve gotten off track, a sense I’ve honed over decades of working with writers and researchers. I don’t just help clients improve their writing, I coach them in developing their own writerly intuition, an ability that will travel with you to your future writing projects.
Types of Projects
I Take On
scholarly humanities and social sciences book projects
scholarly book proposals and journal articles
Trade fiction and non-fiction manuscripts
Trade literary poetry and hybrid manuscripts
Grants and applications
My Process​
As a developmental editor, my process begins with focusing on high order concerns in your project—the structure, tone, and the scope of your project. Then, I help you identify consistent issues in sentence structure, grammar, and citation that can hinder your progress towards meeting these high order goals. Finally, I assist you in crafting an effective revision plan, proposing solutions to help you meet your writing goals, while helping you to identify roadblocks in your writing process. In other words, I teach you how to revise your ideas and the means through which you express them. Often, writers assume that revision comes at the very end of a project, that revision is just a step where writing projects are polished. But as a poet, critic, writing teacher, and publishing industry veteran, I’ve seen first-hand how powerful a tool revision can be in shaping your ideas all the way through the writing process—from brainstorming to final edits.
Since each project is different, my approach to working on projects is tailored and will vary according to your needs. If you have questions about a specific project, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can book a free 30-minute consultation with me through the contact form below or email me at jaramillosixthsenseediting [at] gmail.com.
My Skills
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I enable my clients to do their best writing through encouragement, patience, and deep engagement with their ideas. I am highly skilled at working with multilingual clients whose first language may not be English. Being a dual native speaker of Spanish and English, I am intimately familiar with the challenges of thinking in one language and writing in another. In addition to extensive work in the academic humanities and creative writing, I am also experienced in working with scientists wanting to translate their resesrch into engaging writing for general audiences.
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Other Services
Writing coaching
Copyediting
Publishing consulting
Translation: Spanish to English and English to Spanish
Pricing structure
$100 per hour for full-length scholarly, non-fiction, and prose manuscripts
$300 for full-length poetry manuscripts up to 100 pages, other lengths negotiable
If you have questions about pricing for a specific project, please don't hesitate to reach out.
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About Me
I am an editor and poet with many years of experience in publishing. I have worked in the acquisitions departments at Duke University Press and The Century Foundation, where I assisted in the development of projects across the academic humanities and social sciences. In 2019, I received my PhD from the Graduate Program in Literature from Duke University where I wrote my dissertation on Latin American and Spanish cinema and taught classes across film studies, Latin American and Latinx Studies, critical theory, and media studies. During my PhD, I served as a writing consultant for students, faculty, and staff helping to hone writing projects across disciplines at Duke’s Thompson Writing Program. I hold an MFA in poetry and am the author of three books of poetry. Born in Queens to Colombian parents, I spent much of my childhood between the U.S. and Colombia. I now live in Durham, North Carolina where I co-organize the writing and performance series Paradiso. When not writing or editing, I am an avid film watcher and can be found at the movies. For more on my writing, you can visit my author website.
