Writing and editing services by Mark Loudon and Chrys Goote

Writing and editing have been at the heart of my work for more than 40 years. I started as a newspaper reporter, graduating from the Argus Cadet Course in 1980 and holding senior positions on the Daily News and Mercury before establishing a PR and marketing firm in Pietermaritzburg.

Eventually I was recruited to head up the local Community Chest, raising funds for local charities, which led to a decade of international advocacy for children affected by HIV/AIDS and visits to more than 30 countries, mostly for UNICEF.

After I recovered from burnout I chose a less peripatetic lifestyle, editing manuscripts for authors and publishers and doing a bit of ghost-writing. It doesn't pay well, so in 2013 I started a side hustle selling torches online which keeps a roof over our heads and food in our cats' bowls – but I still love to edit.

My wife, Dr Chrys Goote, is the brains of the operation. She has four university degrees (majoring in languages, psychology, natural medicine and homoeopathy) as well as a folder full of diplomas and course-work ranging from physics and chemistry to bookkeeping and cookery.

Chrys can spot a factual, mathematical or grammatical error at a hundred metres so her job is to keep us from making our clients look bad. She's also a dab hand at referencing and indexing academic works – a very rare talent!

Between us we've edited pretty much everything, from scientific and technical textbooks, through social and political research, to primary-school readers, help-yourself manuals and humorous fiction. And we've cherished each one.

Our goal is to return a document that reads exactly the way our client intended – spare, lucid text in the unmistakable voice of the author. If we succeed, their first impression will be that nothing much has changed, but if they compare it with the source they will find almost every sentence has been polished and refined.

Thanks to the brilliance of our flashlights we don't have to accept every editing job that comes our way. We look for material that interests us (which is a very broad canvas) and enough time to do a proper job. We aren't cheap, and neither is our work, but we deliver real value. Once we've given a quote and a deadline, we stick to it.

If you're looking for someone who will treasure your manuscript as much as you do, we should talk. Please drop me a line at picturesbymark@gmail.com. My phone number is 078 4488777 but I prefer emails because I can manage my time and commitments better that way.

Talk soon!

Mark

Mark Loudon
Loudon Goote Associates
Writing and Editing Services
picturesbymark@gmail.com, +27 78 448 8777