LAUREL OLSON COOK
Author, Writer, Editor
(dba A Way with Words)

LAUREL COOK is a published writer and, since 1990, owner of a home-based business called A Way with Words, which provides editorial and writing services for a wide range of clients from Sonoma County to Japan.

Her editing career got its formal start when she edited a textbook in developmental physiology for an Italian professor while working on her bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature (French minor) at UC Berkeley. From there she moved over to an experimental program in medical education jointly operated by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. Subsequently, she worked as a technical editor (Energy and Environment) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, then briefly as an editor for a small how-to publishing house. After eight years in an administrative position for a private think tank in San Francisco, she decided to launch her own business.

Her writing career began when she was six or seven years old. It was formally acknowledged in 1978 when she and her friend, Pat Cooper, coauthored Hot Springs and Spas of California, published in 1978 by 101 Productions (and still selling used for more than its original price). She followed that edition as sole author of California Spas in 1992, and California Spas & Urban Retreats in 1993, both published by Foghorn Press. In December 2002, she completed an updated version of her guidebook, Spas of California. (http://www.booklocker.com/books/1053.html) (See press release on my HOME page.)

Watch Your Language: Tips from a Working Editor
Also through Booklocker.com, Cook published an e-book, Watch Your Language: Tips from a Working Editor. Avoiding a schoolmarm tone of voice, she lets readers know how, with willingness and a little effort, they can learn to correct such errors as "between you and I" and the all too common use of the contraction "it's" instead of the (unlikely but correct) possessive "its." In its 80 pages, she includes tips on proofreading and evaluating dictionaries. The text is interspersed with occasional bits of "phunny stuff" about our language to keep the reader smiling.
(http://www.booklocker.com/bookpages/
laurelolsoncook.html)

Working with an Editor.
In 1998, Laurel developed this monograph to let people know what is involved in hiring someone to edit and/or proofread their writing, whether a report, an article, a book, or a brochure. In its nine pages, she shows you the editor's world, alerting you to what you can expect when you hire an editor. She distinguishes the different types of editors — those in publishing houses (capital "E" editors) who acquire manuscripts and those who do hands-on copy editing, content (or "substantive") editing, developmental editing, rewriting, and proofreading. (A "developmental" editor can be trusted to look at what you have not said, and perhaps should say, as much as what you have said, and perhaps should not say.)

Here is what is covered:

Introduction: About Editors
Levels of Editing
Copy Editing
Substantive Editing
Developmental Editing
Proofreading
Working with Book-Length Manuscripts
The Author-Client Relationship
How Editors Charge

Visitors to this Web site are invited to request a FREE copy of Working with an Editor by e-mail or snail mail. Write to her at waywordsonline@comcast.net.

This year at the annual Graveside Readings at Oak Mound Cemetery in Healdsburg Laurel is reading "The Portrait" by Stanley Kunitz, poet laureate (at 95) in the year 2000, and "Judas Iscariot" by Countee Cullen, written in the 1920s.

Active in the Healdsburg Literary Guild since its inception, Laurel continues to read at its open-mike salons and other literary events the Guild sponsors. She launched "Graveside Readings" five years ago; it has since become an annual Memorial Day event at the Oak Mound Cemetery. She is a past member of the National Writers Union and a current member of the Authors Guild. She recently read from her memoir at a meeting of the AAUW, Healdsburg branch. Last October, she was the featured guest at the meeting of the Soroptomists, Healdsburg chapter. From time to time, she reads from her work at the Center Literary Cafe held monthly at the local senior center.

On February 13, 2005 at the Carriage House of the Hotel Healdsburg, she read one of her(romantic)short stories for a Valentine's Day event put on by the Healdsburg Literary Guild. In addition, with Simon Jeremiah, she played "Martha" to his "George" in an excerpt from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"


WORK COMPLETED

The memoir she has been working on is done, and the title changed to Restoring a House, Reliving a Life. Triggered by the urban farmhouse she bought in 1996 and has been happily fussing with since, the memoir segues from the facts of its restoration to the fictions of her childhood that were evoked along the way.