Excellent drabblage, Deb; and if you like you can tell Nic I'm taking his advice as we speak.

I will (tell Nic).

The simplicity of the suggestion just took my breath away. It's so damned easy, and so damned right, and so completely useful. Literally, a bazillion doors open up down various paths, and force you to just walk down them, with the banner - "100 words! Stay in the theme! Don't screw it up!" floating right ahead.

Deb, FYI, I'm about halfway through the re-read of "Still Life." It re-reads very well.

Anne, bless you, m'dear. The re-read is a good thing, and is backup for me, in case Jenn has fixes.

OK. Not sure where to put this, but I have a minor situation and a question, so - input?

I recently edited the first chapter, synopsis and pitch letter for a novel written by a friend of Nic's boss. I yelled at him about "show don't tell", reconstructed the pitch letter from the ground up, he sent out a shitload of queries, that's all, end of my participation.

Except that the agents, based on the pitch, sent back enthusiastic "send us the first 50 pages!" letters, and the guy did. And now they're getting back "sorry, the novel is all telling not showing and it doesn't live up to the pitch."

So I just got a panicky email: can this guy and his wife (they co-wrote it) hire me to do a deep, deep edit? Can I show them how to show, not tell?

I have no idea what to charge them. I did the synopsis/pitch/look-over gratis, because it was a favour to a friend of my husband's boss. This, the guy gets to pay me for. Pat Holt (used to be my occasional boss, headed up the book review department at the SF Chronicle) has a business where writers send her their novel and $150, and she gives them general takes. This is going to be much, much more intensive: baby steps.

What in sweet hell do I charge them?

Figure out how many hours it took you to edit the first chapter. Then extrapolate to how many hours total based on that.

If it were me, I'd cost out those hours at my hourly rate for catering. Then I'd decide how much I was going to enjoy the edit, and discount accordingly.

Can you do, depending on how long the chapters are, a couple to several chapters to give them a really good idea of what needs to be done, charge them a consultant fee per hour for the time you spend on it? Then if they want you to do the whole thing you can negotiate a much higher fee, since your participation would be more in the realm of co-writer at that point. Does that make any sense?

OH! They want teaching! If you critique a chapter at a time, they should learn what to do within a couple of chapters (or turn out to be unteachable). You iterate a chapter at a time. So you can just charge your hourly per chapter.

Serial rather than editing:

I know they've already asked you to do the whole thing. But if you do a sizeable chunk to show them exactly what needs to be done and give them a good idea of how to do it, they may want to try it themselves.

Plus, you have your own writing to go on with. This is just a suggestion, it may be completely unworkable in this case. But you may want to offer it, rather than agreeing to take on the whole novel.

ed for speeloing

But there is no hourly cost for catering. It doesn't work that way. You charge by the head, factoring in difficulty of prep (they want individual herring rollmops, they get charged more than it would cost to make a salad), factor in the food costs, add whether they want booze and how long you're going to be onsite, and charge per head.

Yes, they want teaching. Help meeeeeee (Vincent Price, The Fly)