About Kelly
Kelly O’Connor McNees is an author, editor, and content strategist who helps writers improve their craft and prepare their work for success. With more than twenty years’ experience in publishing and communications — including serving in editorial roles with Harper Collins Publishers and the University of Michigan Press and as director of content for a public relations agency for nearly a decade—Kelly is an empathetic guide through the revision process and an incisive editor who helps writers identify and solve problems in their manuscripts.
Kelly is also an accomplished writer. She is the author of The Myth of Surrender, Undiscovered Country, The Island of Doves, In Need of a Good Wife, and The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, and was a ghostwriter for a popular children's series. Her writing has appeared in Time, The Washington Post, The Toast, The Millions, and Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology. She lives in Chicago.
Looking to connect with Kelly on content strategy for your firm? Head over to KOM Content.
How I Learned What I Know
Hi — I’m so glad you’re here! I love helping writers improve their craft and prepare their work for publication, whether they plan to pursue a traditional publishing path or share their work directly with readers. Through manuscript evaluations and one-on-one conversations, I draw on my decades of editorial experience to provide concrete feedback and an action plan for revision that helps beginners and seasoned writers alike elevate the quality of their work and set themselves up for success.
But there are a lot of editors out there. Why should anybody listen to me?
I worked for book publishers. In 2001, I was lucky to land an internship with Milkweed Editions, a wonderful nonprofit publisher based in Minneapolis, where my lifelong attachment to books zeroed in on the editor’s role in selecting manuscripts and collaborating with authors to transform them through revision. After that, I worked for HarperCollins and the University of Michigan Press, continuing to learn about the business side of book publishing and the sectors of the market from highly commercial to scholarly and everything in between. But what I liked best was working directly with authors to improve their manuscripts. In 2008, I launched an earlier version of this editorial services business, called Word Bird. Over the years, I have worked with many, many writers on all kinds of projects. I am also a dedicated reader, a very important (and underrated!) precondition for understanding how stories work.
I am a published author. Like many editors, I am also a writer. After years of working on my first novel, and with an editor’s help to shape my manuscript for submission, I found representation with my first agent, who eventually sold that novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, to Amy Einhorn Books, an imprint of Putnam at that time. Since then, I have been fortunate to see four more novels published, two with Berkley/Penguin and two with Pegasus Books. The road to publication for each of these books was a long journey, with many stops and starts, moments of elation, and difficult setbacks. I have changed agents twice and worked with four different editors at those publishers, learning along the way that there is no “typical” path for an author or a book. Again and again, as the market constantly shifted, experience taught me that the only thing I could really control was the quality of my work. A strong vision plus a willingness to do the hard work of drafting and (endless!) revision have helped me stay focused on what really matters — engaging readers on the themes I am passionate about.
I have felt ALL the things you are feeling, I promise. I get that this is not just business — it’s personal. Most people hire experts all the time to do the things they don’t know how to do themselves. You might get a golf pro to help you with your swing, a plumber to install a new sink, someone at the nursery to tell you which perennial will thrive in the shade of your maple tree. But trusting someone with your writing is not a simple trade of money for expertise. Most writers have been dreaming of seeing their name on the spine of a book since they were very young, and their work on a manuscript is tied up with a whole tangle of emotions around that dream. Opportunities in book publishing are not fairly distributed (a truth I’ve experienced from both sides of the fence), and so much is out of your control, which can be incredibly frustrating when you long to connect your story with readers. Writers deserve to work with an editor who offers both technical expertise and a deep understanding of all this emotional complexity. Sometimes editorial work is two parts editing and one part therapy, and that’s okay with me. It’s an honor to play a part in a book’s development, and I am grateful for every opportunity to collaborate and help clients ride the waves of the uncertain journey to publication.