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Hi there. My name is Jo, and I’m a memoirist and a memoir ghostwriter. My passion is bringing personal stories to life with authenticity and soul, in a way that honors the heartbeat of each person’s unique journey.
I believe our stories have the power to connect us, like knots in an ever-expanding rope of humanity. By sharing our lived experiences, we can break through barriers of indifference and fear to create bonds of compassion, empathy and understanding. That’s why I’m on a mission to bring our stories to life.
The hard part – and often the roadblock – is finding the right words to express one’s individual narrative. Our pesky emotions, doubts and feelings of overwhelm creep in, and the task suddenly feels too big, too hard, too much. So, we tuck our stories back in our heart pockets and move on with life.
That’s where I come in. I’m here to remove those roadblocks, so together we can gently unearth your story and release it into the wild, one word at a time.
Do you feel a story percolating inside of you? It would truly be my honor to help you tell it.
Writing my memoir, Bottled Up, has been a labor of love. It’s also taken copious amounts of patience, grit and Sisu – a word you’ll hear me talk about a lot – to get from word one to done. For six years, I’ve mined the heart of my life story, immersed myself in the craft of memoir, excavated key memories, then enlisted my writing community and my brilliant editor to help me refine it until it sparkled. Despite stereotypes, writing is far from a solo sport.
Bottled Up is scheduled to release in early 2027. Between now and then, I invite you behind the scenes to follow my journey, which I tell through personal essays, poems, snippets, and cut scenes from my memoir, Bottled Up…A Work in Progress on Substack.
I’m also looking for memoir enthusiasts to be on my Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) team to read and review my memoir before it comes out. If you would like to apply for my ARC team, please email me and I’ll add you to my list.
The simple fact is, you could choose from thousands of ghostwriters to help you write your story. Literally, over 8,000 people worldwide list “ghostwriter” as their profession.
Why me, then? First, I’m a memoirist. Ironically, most memoir ghostwriters are not. As such, I’m uniquely aligned to ghostwrite or co-write your story. I personally understand the complexities of this unique genre and what it takes to excavate one’s lived experience. I know what questions to ask to get to the heart of your story, and I can anticipate the inevitable hurdles to smoothly navigate us to your finished manuscript.
I’ve also written hundreds of thousands of words for executives, business owners and fascinating individuals over the past quarter century – words they literally have to speak or send to others, as if the words were their own. Finding your voice is my superpower.
Since my first autobiographical poem at age five, storytelling has always been part of my soul. Whether you have a fully baked project in your mind or just the faintest sliver of an idea, I can help you extract and capture your story in a memoir or descriptive nonfiction book.
I’m guessing you have a story trapped inside you, but something has been holding you back for years; Most likely, it’s a lack of time, or an internalized belief that you aren’t a writer. I get it. I’ve stopped myself countless times for these reasons, too.
I can help you find and write your story, and in the process, make you a published author! I’m skilled at teasing out the arc of your narrative through scene work and bringing your story to life on paper. I promise – when you have a partner, it’s easier than you think!
You know what they say – behind every great book is an exceptional editor! Okay, maybe I made that up, but I wholeheartedly believe it. I love editing stories as much as I love writing them, and I’m here to help you get from draft one to done!
– Your job: To get allllll the words out of your head and onto the page.
– My job: To nudge, cajole or tickle those words into the right order (and then proofread every word) to help you create your best work.
Here’s the situation. You’ve written a short story, a novel, a memoir, a business book, or a compilation of short stories. Now, you need a trusted partner to read your work with a critical (but compassionate) eye to help you organize it, rework sections and review the nitty-gritty details to create the most powerful version of your piece.
To get nerdy for a moment, there are six – some would argue seven or eight – types of book editing: editorial assessment, developmental editing (also called story editing), structural editing, line editing, copy editing, proofreading and substantive editing.
My forte is substantive editing, often called content editing, which involves a structural critique and a deep review of sentence structure, grammar, content, word usage, and overall writing style. I will read every word of every paragraph and use decades of experience and earned intuition to lay out the story in a logical and compelling way that will grab readers’ attention and keep them hooked until they turn the very last page.
I then leverage AI tools or another set of human eyes for copy editing and proofreading. Writing is a team effort. We can create anything together!
