Grace Erin

Grace is a freelance developmental fiction editor who works with authors of short stories all the way up to full-length novels. She works primarily with new and independent authors, helping them revise their manuscripts and grow in the craft of writing. She also works with authors of select types of narrative non-fiction, such as personal essays and memoirs.

Grace is also the mind behind the Writing with Grace Substack, an outlet for her to share some of her creative writing, personal essays, and interviews about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. When she developed a fancy for expanding her interviews into the bookish world we all love, she started the Between the Edits podcast, where she focuses primarily on interviewing anyone and everyone so long as it kinda, sorta, maybe has something to do with writing.

In her free time, she (you guessed it) writes and reads. A lot.

What background do you have in writing and editing?

I have a certificate in Developmental Editing from the Editorial Freelancers Association and have been freelance developmental editing since March 2025.

Prior to that, I worked in various fields that utilized professional writing and communications skills. Nearly every facet of these jobs involved being able to succinctly and accurately convey information to specific audiences.

Writing in a professional capacity felt like it came very naturally to me in part because I loved writing as a hobby. I’ve been writing short stories since middle school. It’s been on my bucket list for over half my life to be a published author, and in my work toward that goal, I discovered I have a knack for the developmental side of the writing craft. Over the last three years, I decided to finally align my career with this passion, and working on the two side-by-side has brought me closer than ever to achieving my goals.

What type of editing do you do, and what genres do you work on?

I am a developmental editor only. While I can do a decent job on some line editing, and I understand the mechanics of a proper copy edit and proofread, these are not my strong suits. You do NOT want me checking your comma placements, I’ll tell you that!

I have the most experience and qualifications for fiction. If I had to narrow myself down to two or three target genres, it’d be the fantasy/romantasy, general romance, and historical fiction genres. In my first year of freelancing, I found another niche in helping with personal essays and some non-fiction works that have strong narrative structures, such as memoirs.

What inspired you to start offering editorial services?

After college, I really struggled with discerning what to do with my life. Knowing I needed to work because work and financial independence are good, I opted to take some time to figure out my path by working administrative office jobs. I knew I was a very detail-oriented and organized individual, which made me well-suited to those tasks, and it would provide me with the opportunity to develop a skill set that could be transferred to any number of other fields.

But after a handful of years of doing this, I realized it just wasn’t fitting. I was doing excellent work, but I was struggling to find peace. For a while, I convinced myself that I just needed to tough it out – not every job needs to align with your inner passions, and that is still very true. Every job has its downsides, and sometimes you need to do jobs you don’t like. End of story.

Even accepting this, I struggled to find peace. I spent a few years intentionally thinking about what I wanted to orient my life around and realized I needed to invest in a career that would allow me to prioritize family and home life. For my personal situation, that meant finding a job that I could scale up or down and work remotely if needed.

I know – it sounds like what everyone wants, and we can’t all have that. But I spent the better part of two years trying to research job options to see if there was one that might be a fit for me. That’s when I started thinking very seriously about how to make my writing a career, and it wasn’t long before I learned about developmental editing. I spent some time researching this field, discovering what it would take to get certified and qualified, and tried my hand at a few smaller, pro-bono jobs to test my suitability. I fell in love with it, so I took the leap!

Are there any other social media links, websites, or other places to learn about you that we should add?

Editing:

https://www.graceerinedits.com/

www.linkedin.com/in/grace-powers-025262285

IG & Threads, FB: @graceerinedits

Substack:

https://graceerinedits.substack.com/

Podcast:

IG: @betweentheedits

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDO-xCM2WSPEwDmjR4Jy87A

What tools or software are essential to your workflow?

MOST IMPORTANT - paper and pencil, physical planner/journal

Spotify - playlists, epic playlists, so many playlists

Bonsai - business management, contracts, taxes

Scrivener - for writing

Adobe - for agreements and PDFs

Riverside - for podcast recording and some editing

Capcut - simple video editing

Canva Pro - marketing and graphics

Meta Business Suite - FB and IG content planning and management

What do you want people to take away from your podcast?

It’s a simple goal, really, and nothing revolutionary. I hope to encourage people (yes, you) to be themselves. Whether it’s just about sharing their reading interests, or exploring their writing, or figuring out how to market their book – find something true, something genuine, and lean into that. There’s so much more to writer’s than their writing, and there’s so many extraordinary stories that come from seemingly ordinary people. I hope that every interview I produce gets at something fundamental to the person, something that really humanizes them to the audience. A connection that might make them feel like friends should they bump into one another on the street.

Have there been any moments where you doubted continuing, and what kept you going?

For both editing and podcasting – you bet.

For editing – there’s so many excellent editors out there, and when you’re first starting out, it can feel impossible to be noticed. I also aim to be an author one day, so I know what a struggle it is as an author to manage very finite, limited resources in order to exact that dream to the best of your abilities. Not every author with an amazing story can afford to hire multiple editors, or any editor at all. So I struggled in the beginning with worrying that editing would never be my full-time job. Some months, it still feels like that, but it’s much better now.

I think the biggest turning point was realizing that I resonate with authors seeking out a developmental editor for the first time. I’ve always been passionate about teaching (it’s what I originally wanted to do with my career), and so I’ve found that I am an excellent developmental editor to guide authors through their first experiences with this process. In fact, I have a project I’m working on that will help me better meet these needs (to be released toward the end of 2026, so stay tuned!).

For podcasting – It’s pretty similar, actually. There’s so many excellent podcasts out there, and when you’re just starting out, you can never hope to match the quality of some of the other, more established podcasts available. But I just kept leaning into the giddy feeling I get after chatting with someone really cool for an hour. Each time, I think… how lucky am I to be doing this? And I’m gonna give that up–for what? Because I’m not getting the views I hoped for after only doing one season? As Spock would say, that is highly illogical.

If you could give any advice to a new podcaster, what would it be?

While I understand that everyone has to start somewhere, my advice at this time would be to not compromise on the types of guests you want to bring on. Make sure you have a genuine interest in not only the people, but also their work (if relevant). The worst thing you can do for a podcast, which consists of marketing a conversation, is to have a conversation that you aren’t interested in or comfortable with.

Now, this isn’t to say that you should never challenge yourself with new perspectives or a topic outside of your comfort zone – but do it within reason. Be smart. Like I already mentioned, there’s plenty of podcasts out there already. You won’t help yourself any by producing content that listeners can feel you’re uncomfortable with or disinterested in. Be yourself, and that starts with producing a podcast you would actually want to listen to.