About Me — Rochelle Deans

Editor, author, formatter, neurodivergent

On Twitter, my bio used to be, “Editor, author, formatter. Bad habits include mispronouncing words, eating ice cream right before bed, and spending too much time on the internet.” It’s flippant, maybe. A little weird. But it’s all true, and I feel like editors get the same kind of rap as librarians, like we’re peering down our noses at you through boring glasses, constantly judging.

That’s not really who I am.

For one thing, I promise you I’m way too short to peer down my nose at anyone. For another, I was an awful speller as a kid and didn’t believe in editing my own work pretty much until my last year of college. I skated by on decent-enough first drafts and spell-checkers. But I liked helping other people write, and took up a $5/essay editing side gig in college, too.

As a kid, I wanted to be an artist, then a songwriter, then a poet. When people in high school asked me if I’d ever write a novel, I told them I didn’t have the attention span to do that. It turns out I most likely have undiagnosed ADHD, which explains my retort. It does not explain why I’ve written seven novels since then, though.

These days, I have two kids (born in June 2014 and December 2015) who spell better than I did in high school, a husband, and a cat named Iseult who doesn’t realize she is a cat. Perhaps she thinks she’s the Voidwitch she’s named after.

I’ve been to more countries than I have U.S. states, despite living within the U.S. (in Oregon, to be more specific). And when I’m not editing or writing novels or articles, I’m probably drawing, playing piano, doing gymnastics, or spending way too much time on Solitaire apps.

Rochelle Deans Editing

I started my own editing business in 2015, so I have a five-year head start on the whole working-from-home thing. You can read a little about that, plus working with kids at home, here.

My work has expanded to include creating templates for the university I work for, formatting to Turabian standards for anyone who asks and consulting about formatting as well.

In addition, last year I made a full course on fearless formatting in Word, with three hours of video and several homework assignments. It’s one of my biggest accomplishments, and I couldn’t be more proud of how it turned out.

On Medium

I joined Medium in November 2021 specifically to write articles for fiction writers, focusing on intermediate to advanced topics that I often go over with my one-on-one clients. To that end, I created the publication Building a Novel, where I post writing tips and also have a series on editing along with me, to show how a professional editor self-edits her own work.

Outside of my writing advice, which you can find in The Writing Cooperative as well as my own publication, I often write about productivity — specifically productivity through the lens of my neurodiversity. One of my favorites is this article in Midform about wholeheartedly half-assing. It’s pretty much my life philosophy at this point: consistent inconsistency leads to much better progress than occasional perfection.

Which I’m working on. And I hope you’ll join me.

If you like my work and would like to read more of it, consider joining Medium with my referral link to get full access to every article on Medium. Using my referral link doesn’t cost you anything, but half of the fee goes directly to supporting me each month.