I spend my days making other people's words work.

I have a doctorate in English and I have spent more than twenty years writing and editing for other people. Website copy, brochures and marketing collateral. Dissertations and reports. Statements of purpose and letters of recommendation, which I have been writing since 2013. Finance, real estate, education, technology, travel, healthcare, exports. Some of it under my name and a good deal of it under someone else’s.

Most work arrives already written. The problem is rarely grammar; it is that the sentence is doing three jobs at once, or the point is in the last paragraph instead of the first. My work is to find what the writer meant and take out everything standing in front of it — and to say so plainly when a draft needs rethinking rather than tidying.

I run NeelsEdit, which has offered content writing, editing and proofreading since 2013, and I edit for Pepper Content. I translate between English, Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi. I train teams in writing and communication, and I hold a TEFL certificate from Cambridge.

The rest of the time I write my own. Eight books so far, on mindset, confidence and getting out of your own way, and poetry — which is where I started and where I still go to find out whether a line works.

I work from Surat, remotely or in person. Rates depend on the piece, so write and tell me what you have.