Samples
DEVELOPMENTAL WRITING & EDITING
Author Drafts Developed, Expanded
- The Colors of Grief: Understanding a child’s journey through loss from birth to adulthood, by Janis A. Di Ciacco, Ph.D. Below is the rewritten Preface, along with the task description. 200 hours.
- Lost In Your Own Office: How to get it organized, by Anne McGurty. May 2010 Business Tips booklet. “Thank you, Charol, for your professional services in editing my book… You were clever with reworking my words, quick with your delivery, and the overall cost of the project was extremely affordable.” Tasks included: Total reorganization, expanding layout to increase page volume (e.g., headings, subheadings, space breaks, bullets, text indenting, font choices); some creative embellishments and rewriting. Original 3925 words (avg 157 wds/hr) = 25 hours. Available at Amazon.com.
PREFACE
The Colors of Grief was seeded out of a desire to reduce children’s suffering in their journey through healing grief during their developmental years from infancy to the mid-twenties. This emotional journey is one of many colors—colors of love and sadness, courage and fear, strength and confusion; some brilliant, some dull; some dark, some bright. Colors of resilience.
Written for parents, educators, and health-care providers, The Colors of Grief addresses children’s shattered lives and expectations and the stages through their developmental phases, to provide practical applications to support them after a significant life loss or the death of a parent or caregiver.
In Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, the young prince shows the grownups his masterpiece of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant and asks if they are scared? The adults respond, “Why be scared of a hat?” Grownups often fail to understand childhood grief, partially because we are misattuned to children’s nonverbal communication (preverbal) about their grief experience. We superimpose our own perspective on their behavior.
Recent advances in science offer a lens into some of children’s preverbal dimensions. However, as very few longitudinal studies have been done regarding children and grief, The Colors of Grief asks and addresses new questions surrounding these neuropsychological dimensions, in the hope of expanding ways in which we can support children.
Part I evaluates the general aspects of developmental bereavement in children, discussing: (1) The nature of a child’s shattered life expectations after a significant loss, such as the death of a parent. (2) The traumatic effect of losing a loved one and feeling displaced from life’s normal daily routines that help to maintain physiological and psychological stability; and how physical ailment, emotional distress, and/or social dysfunction may show up later in life without attentive adult care. (3) How children grieve differently than adults and need support to guide them through their recovery. (4) The range of emotions through the grief process. (5) The stages of shock and the four phases of denial: how, unaddressed, continued denial may result in a child shrinking from change, stuck in a developmental cocoon, unable to evolve into full adult potential.
Part II maps the primary developmental stages: birth-to-two years, two-to-five, six-to-eleven, and eleven to about age twenty-five. Each section includes: (1) Typical developmental tasks to be mastered in each life stage in order to become healthy and successful; including physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and moral dimensions based on the child’s neuropsychobiological foundation and culture. (2) How the child in a given developmental stage conceptualizes his or her loss. (3) Potential problems that may arise during each developmental stage. (4) Suggestions to support the child through each developmental stage.
Significant loss, especially the death of a parent early in development, becomes “hardwired” into a child’s physical body, emotional responses, moral understanding, cognitive reasoning and perceptions, and social skills. The cumulative effects of unresolved loss can be quite damaging when not fully addressed or understood.
Drawing on thirty-seven years of research and experience with children who have lost a parent, caregiver or sibling, Dr. Janis A. Di Ciacco has discovered that the journey of healing a child’s grief begins the day of his or her loss and ends, at the earliest, in young adulthood.
Adults often misunderstand children’s unique grief experience, and superimpose their own perspective on what children’s nonverbal behaviors must mean. Numerous books have discussed children and loss, divorce and bereavement. The Colors of Grief offers three new perspectives, to more thoroughly address children’s communication styles and support them through grief.
The Colors of Grief is a more comprehensive study than previous publications on the effects of grief in children of all ages. It is the first book on childhood loss and grief to address the preverbal age group, birth to two-year-olds from a neurodevelopmental perspective. It also is the first book to utilize recent advances in neuropsychology on development of both the brain and the body (neurobiology).
The journey to healing grief weaves throughout a child’s developmental years. Sometimes a child’s grief is obvious and visible. Sometimes it isn’t. However, it is always in the background, influencing his or her emotions, behaviors, interactions, and communication.
At its most essential core, grief for a child is a journey of the heart. The child has suffered a deep wounding. When you reach out with your heart and wrap the child in your strength, comprehending children’s unique way of suffering and reacting to pain, he or she will develop a secure sense of self … and that young heart will become whole and strong at the core.
Your time and attention are a gift that will last a lifetime for that child and will result in a healthy, happy adult who is capable of deep compassion and intimacy.
Janis A. Di Ciacco: “Writing this book in a cohesive manner could not have been achieved without the objective and insightful work of my editor, Charol Messenger, who worked with diligence and integrity. Because of her creative formatting and revisions, the readers will find the information easy to digest.”
Original pages 155, expanded to 205 (tightened to 175 in print) (more contents acquired from author).
Two drafts, 200 hours (one hour per original page plus 33% to account for added volume). Titled book, chapters, parts. Completely reorganized contents (references, resources, appendices to end of book) with full bulleted layout. Developed and added contents. Rewrote throughout (e.g., paraphrasing). Modified clinical language and academic writing style to suit general lay readers; adjusted tone and syntax (e.g., opened sections with anecdotes and analogies, followed by re-languaged support analyses). Shorter paragraphs and informal punctuation style so more accessible and personal voice. Style edited bibliography.
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