Hello, I'm Nicola. A Senior Creative Coach and Lead Development Editor. A developmental edit is the most comprehensive edit you can get, and leans most into your creative and career potential.

Working for 25 years at the intersection of traditional publishing (Bloomsbury, Writers & Artists, Amazon), story world building and commissioning (Working Partners, Cornerstones), as a writer myself (Borderlands, Bread Loaf, La Muse, ghostwriter, travel writer, novelist, Master of Poetics of Imagination) and teaching (BFI, Lyric Theatre, Writers’ Centre), you see and learn a lot from the mistakes and success of thousands of manuscripts across literary forms and genres.

A Development Editor should be your first port of call when you begin seeking professional input into your novel or memoir, and when you’ve finished a major draft and want to know if it “works” or not. Developmental Editors look at the big picture. We focus on things like plot, character development, theme, point of view, etc. But it can go so much deeper than that, and become an incredible mentoring experience.

What makes for a winning editor is not someone telling talent what to do but a dyed-in-the-wool practitioner drawing on real, varied experience to show you, the Writer, how to make more informed decisions and the right calls for yourself and your work. Empowering you to make the finest creative decisions. Bringing forward the transformative moment when you go from writing a book to authoring one. The heart of the creative process still gives me a thrill and is the reason why I return to this work year after year.

Coming up through the industry in the way I did, you can’t fail to grow into something of a maven, getting to the know the ins and outs of the creative and editorial process, the industry and the marketplace. What I value most is helping writers get under the understood so they can truly become the authority on their own book, genre, and creative trajectory.

Who do I want to help succeed? Deeply thinking, feeling individuals who want to harness the power of story and their own creative potency to show the world something it is NOT seeing. For me, I don’t just inspire others to commit to their own success but show them precise ways to harness their narrative power in service to their art/craft, message, and audience.

Personally, I have a penchant for metaphysical/visionary novels, healing memoirs, and good writing with fairy-folk tale leanings but I’m open to good ideas in whatever form they take. Online serialisation is a growing field of interest of mine.

Entrust me with your work and stewarding your creative welfare and professional enhancement. Let's talk. Writers welcome, worldwide. Three spots for Winter-Spring 2026 pre-bookings. Enquiry form below.