In addition to teaching courses and workshops, I critique manuscripts and work individually with people on their writing. I work as a "writing coach," helping students  to develop their writing skills. I specializing in poetry and fiction both the short story and novel forms, but will occasionally work with someone in developing a personal essay or memoir.

I charge $75/ hour.  If you wish to discuss enlisting my services, contact me at jana@janaharris.net

There are three possible models for individual mentoring/coaching/teaching/consultation work:

1. Set Schedule: We establish a set schedule of deadlines for when you will send me work and when I will respond.  For example, we might say that Susan will send me some writing every other Monday, and I will promise feedback by the following week.  We work in "terms," such as Fall Term or Winter Term or a Ten Week Term. The writer contracts and prepays for a certain number of hours, i.e. 1 hour consultation every two weeks, or 1/2 hour every week, for the given term. The deadline dates hold the writer accountable and guarantee feedback with a short turn-around. We can either agree that I will only spend X amount of time and money each session; or that I will bill your prepaid account whatever time I need to spend.

2. Open Schedule:A less structured version is for you to prepay for a certain amount of time--say 5 hours--and then spend this time as you like, whenever you like, again over a certain agreed upon period of time. In this model, you can send me work whenever you like, and I'll get to it ASAP.

3. Poetry/Short Story/ Memoir Development Model: Basically follows the above formats, but with more of an instructional direction. That means  I give you assignments and you send me poems or short stories or a memoir. Your work does not have to be a poem/story/memoir from the assignment. The assignments are merely a springboard. Why?  Some people cannot write without an assignment. Some people can write anything but the assignment. Some people have been working on a poem/short story/memoir which has nothing to do with the assignment, but they want feed back on their work and they want it now. The important thing is that you write and you get better at it.  We could agree on a ten week term, i.e. ten assignments (a ten hour program).  You need not turn in an assignment every week. You might want to turn in an assignment every other week. It's up to you how you want to "spend" you time. I may ask that you purchase a text book and/or that you read the work of a particular writer, one that we both agree on. There may also be other directed readings.