I'm hiring a writing assistant

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Seeking writer/editor for help with a nonfiction book

Pay: $20/hour
Hours: 10+ hours/week
Start date: Immediate
Location: Virtual

I’m looking for an ultratalented writer/editor to assist me during the writing process for a psychology book. Is the book about anything? Yes! It’s about the science of how we make decisions about dating, sex, and relationships. The title is The 10 Mistakes of Modern Love.

I’d like to hire a clear thinker with an eye for clarity and precision—someone with a confident narrative voice and a good command of modern prose style.

Ideally you have at least 3-5 years editing experience, and you’re good at synthesizing information, thinking about structure, and editing for clarity and style. Hopefully you also read widely, including nonfiction books. Knowledge of psychology isn’t required, just good analytical thinking skills and, most of all, the ability to write good clear sentences quickly.

The job will be super fun because instead of working off on your own, we’ll mostly be working together in real time via Google Docs—talking out ideas, hashing out verbiage, and writing the best paragraphs ever.

Since we’ll be communicating mostly via chat, you should be articulate, cheerful, friendly, and a fast typist. If you’re the kind of person who answers your text messages with the single word “ok,” then you’re probably not the right person for this job. But if you’re quick and funny when talking over chat, you might be the ideal candidate.

Your writing/editing duties will include such tasks as:

  • hashing out ideas in real time over Google Chat
  • helping with structure and organization
  • taking scattered notes, quotes, and sentence fragments, putting them in logical order, and synthesizing them
  • consolidating prose / combining repetitive paragraphs
  • retrieving and reviewing psychology journal articles

I’ll also ask for your help editing other writing projects, e.g. text for class descriptions, pitch emails and client proposals, and scripts for presentations and TED-style talks.

If you’re an aspiring writer and you want to learn, I do think this could be something of a crash course in writing a nonfiction book. The work will no doubt help you become a better writer, editor, and storyteller, if that’s what you aspire to—especially since, again, instead of editing my work off on your own, we’ll be explicitly talking through aspects of the craft.

 think this is a good opportunity for an aspiring writer to practice applying the principles of good writing and storytelling. That said, you don’t need to be a student to apply. If you’re a veteran writer/editor just looking for interesting part-time time work, even better.

So! Send us your resume and a writing sample and let’s do some writing.

Here’s my bio in case you’re interested in knowing a bit about my background.

About me

Jay Dixit is an award-winning science writer, storyteller, and writing teacher whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Slate, Wired, and Psychology Today. As an interviewer, Jay has spoken to Spike Lee, Tim Roth, Willem Dafoe, and Tony Robbins. Jay also conducted George Carlin’s last interview—which George Carlin called the “most complete interview” of his life.

Jay has taught creative writing at Columbia University, and leads regular classes in writing and storytelling through Storytelling NYC. Jay is also the winner of The Moth, a live stage storytelling competition based in New York, and his story “My Father’s Love” appears on The Moth Radio Hour and NPR.

To apply

Send your resume and a writing sample to jobs@storytelling.nyc by Monday, October 23 at 6:00pm Eastern. And please do feel free to share this post.