Today we’d like to introduce you to Valari Westeren

Hi Valari, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?

I’d wanted to be a novelist since I was nine years old. As an adult, of course, I did realize I’d have to pursue a different line of work to pay the bills, even though I wasn’t about to give up my dream career. In my junior year of college, I took an editing internship for a nonprofit and discovered I really enjoyed the work. So while browsing Facebook in my senior year, all it took was one ad for a freelance proofreading course for me to decide proofreading was the route I wanted to go.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Well, I graduated college in the infamous year of 2020. So no, pursuing my dreams has not been a smooth road at all.

I got started with editing on Upwork, but it was hard to get my foot in the door since I mainly had education, not experience just yet. Problem was, in the 2020 job market, I had no luck trying to get a traditional 9 to 5 editing job either. Everything was remote, and competition for jobs was too steep. So I scraped by that year, mostly supported by my parents, until in 2021 I finally got my first “real” steady editing job, which was working for a professor from my alma mater who wasn’t a native English speaker.

At the same time, I’d joined a new school called the Author Conservatory, which teaches writing and business skills to its students. I joined to pursue my original dream of publishing fiction, but because they emphasize the importance of business and marketing skills, they gave me instruction and encouragement in marketing my editing and turning that into a respectable freelance job. It was still a difficult road, but today the majority of my income does come from my freelance editing! Four and a half years after I started, my hard work is paying off. Now I don’t need to worry about how to feed myself while I continue to work on my fiction writing on the side.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

As a copy editor and proofreader, I provide the last or second-to-last pair of eyes on a manuscript to make sure the formatting is up to standard, the sentence flow makes sense, and the grammar is correct. Mainly I edit nonfiction book manuscripts, especially faith-based writing, religious studies, and academic works.

My ideal client is a trained nonfiction writer who is very knowledgeable in their field but needs a little help turning their ideas into a book. They’ve already taken their writing through developmental edits that critiqued their content, and now they need to make sure their writing is formatted correctly and doesn’t contain any typos or mistakes that will detract from their credibility. They are “book smart” and passionate to share their study and research with the world whatever their field may be, especially the arts and humanities or Christian religion. They’ve put in the work to ensure that their content will add to their field of study, so now they need an editor who can give their writing that final pass before it’s ready to be taken to print.

As a fiction writer, I’m a bit further behind, but I am making strides toward publishing a full novel! As my capstone project before graduating the Author Conservatory, I published the science fiction short story “Symbiosis” in the conservatory’s anthology Voices of the Future: Stories of Family and Fearlessness. Today I am using that short story to get in front of readers while I develop a full-length sci-fi novel to pitch to agents and editors.

My ideal reader loves science fiction and fantasy that borrow from the mystery and thriller genres as well. They adore authentic and diverse female characters who have an equal or higher ratio of representation compared with male characters. They live for slow-burn reveals and thrilling plot twists that keep them turning pages well after midnight. Most of all, they want thought-provoking themes that push past easy answers to moral dilemmas and have a sense of grounded realism, while still pointing toward hope.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?

On the copy editing and proofreading side, I’m always looking to partner with new publishers. I like to work with publishers on a contract basis, meaning they send me work based on their need at the moment, after checking whether I’m available. (I usually am!) I’ve worked with both traditional and hybrid book publishers, so I’m open to different approaches to publication.

On the fiction writing side, I’ve recently started partnering with more artists to design merch based on the short story I have already published. I’m passionate about supporting small businesses, so I’m happy to work with crafters, artisans, and web artists willing to create new products I can pitch to the audience I’m building for my writing. Jewelry, web comic panels, character art, baked goods–the possibilities are endless!

Pricing:

• Copy Edit: $0.025 per word
• Proofread: $0.02 per word

Contact Info:

• Website: https://valariwesteren.com
• Other: https://valari-westeren.kit.com/5826a8a5a9?fbclid=IwAR03rMSDcHs37nNFFiLvaMVivVGQAWi4mH4zPgbWK-36HaBAKTo1lzAp6mA

Image Credits

Photos by Debbie Gilman.

Book cover designed by Megan McCullough