If you are reading this, most likely you’re dreaming of someone to help you with your writing endeavors. I want you to know that I’m not here to judge but to help.
Memoir and poetry can be deeply personal, and while it’s redundant to say fiction is fictional, it is all still you, however far-reaching. There’s no way around it, writing is soul work. In creating a crime novel, a poem about birches, a family story, or a history of Salem, something inside you is finding its way to the page, something that isn’t known by anyone else until it’s read. All of which makes looking for an editor too much like a first date. How can you know who this person is, what they are going to say, or how they might influence you? Truthfully, you can’t—until they read what you’ve written and you’ve shared an initial exchange.
Still, you need to determine if I might be the right fit, if this is a chance worth taking. The following pages will give you a sense of me.
ABOUT D M GORDON will tell you what I’ve written and how I’ve learned what I know.
EDITORIAL SERVICES will begin to describe my approach to editing and how much it might cost.
WRITERS’ COMMENTS will inform you of other writers’ experiences.
But maybe start here, a short, online written interview, 10 Questions from the Massachusetts Review. https://www.massreview.org/node/9669 This includes a sonnet, linked through the poem title. This will tell you who I am as a writer, but not necessarily as a reader.
I respect and can accommodate a wide variety of voices. My job is to help you towards the best version of your writerly self, and not to sound like me. There is no carved-in-stone answer to what your best self might be. It’s always evolving. I will start by looking at what you’re trying to say and how you are saying it.
For as many people as you ask for feedback, you will receive that many responses. Teachers, editors, agents, fellow writers, family or next door neighbor, each will offer different things, sometimes wildly different. If I read for you, I’ll respond with the awareness that I am only one person, that possible responses are infinite, and the only opinion that matters, ever, is yours. My thoughts. Your work.
Please enjoy these pages. I look forward to hearing from you.
Diana
dmgordon@comcast.net
Editorial Services 
As an editor, Diana is both kind and critical. She does a better job of balancing those two necessary components of editing than anyone I’ve worked with before, and her thoughts both on the structure and line-to-line flow of my novel have been immensely helpful. I recommend her highly.
Offering up creative work to a stranger’s eye is more than difficult, but Diana made it easy. She’s not willing to accept pat answers, but she’s more than willing to support good work and to help her writers find their best selves.
Stan W.
Diana, you’ve been an amazing editor. You’re that rare editor who sees both the acorns and the forest through the trees. I know we’re going to continue to do great things together.
My first essay was published by Refinery29. I was assigned a staff editor and I got a crash course in the art of writing and the value of a good editor. That was when I realized I had a lot to learn and found Diana. We agreed to meet to see if we might be a match and we sat over tea for nearly two hours. Through our work together, everything I’ve written and submitted has been published – five essays and a few poems.
Diana edits with great skill and sensitivity. She corrects the grammar, punctuation, tense, etc. but does so much more to improve a story by deleting what isn’t needed, suggesting changes, rearranging sentences, etc. More importantly, she pushes me to be a better writer. I share my success with Diana. Her work as an editor adds the polish needed to make my writing shine.
I’ve had pieces published in Refinery29, The Write Launch, Entropy, Chaleur Magazine, Brevity and the WriteAngles Journal.
Diana Gordon, my brilliant and challenging editor, lights the flame that ignites the work.
In the year and a half since we worked together, three of my stories have been published. The Huangpu River was published by Glass Mountain, Tucumcari has been picked up by High Desert Journal, and Midway published Rockport Shores. That’s pretty phenomenal.
Working with her has been a wondrous adventure – delving into the depths of a story and finding the surprises – and where it should go. Knitting together the pieces to deliver something whole.
Shirley Sullivan
Diana Gordon is outstanding. She was able to follow my stream of consciousness attempts and make useful and rational suggestions. I felt like I was attending a master class. I haven’t done creative prose writing in many years. I wanted to test my ability to write erotic fiction. I felt that her approach was professional and her modifications left me and what I wanted to say intact.