by Linden Gross | May 14, 2026 | Editing, Language, Writing
Every writer has a natural tendency to sprawl. We fall in love with words, we hedge our statements, we add “just,” “really,” and “very” as if they were seasoning. But as Jack Smith noted in The Writer magazine’s article “Lean and Clean,” writing gets stronger when it...
by Linden Gross | Jan 29, 2026 | Editing, Writing, Writing Coach Services
Congratulations—you finished a draft of your book! Now comes the part that separates dabblers from authors: revision. If your manuscript feels sloppy, kudos to you. First drafts are supposed to be messy since you need to let it all hang out when you’re creating....
by Linden Gross | Jan 22, 2026 | Editing, Language, Writing
Good, character-revealing dialogue does more than move a plot forward—it reveals who your characters are when they’re not trying to explain themselves. What they say, how they say it, and what they don’t say all build a portrait more vivid than any description could....
by Linden Gross | Oct 12, 2023 | Editing
Why do so few people look at the big picture? I just found out that my HOA is considering ripping out the community’s 20-year-old landscape and replacing it with new. I’ll admit that sometimes a project does require a total revamp. But to determine whether...
by Linden Gross | Mar 2, 2023 | Editing, Writing Coach Services
Last November, J.W. Judge and Barbara Hinske interviewed me for The Write Approach podcast. I published the first part of that interview about working with a writing coach last month. Here’s the second part of the interview, which focuses on the different kinds...
by Linden Gross | Dec 15, 2022 | Editing
Now that we’ve dealt with the formatting of your manuscript, we can finally move on to how to copyedit language. I always start by running two spellchecks. The spellcheck attached to Word is much faster, but catches less than Grammarly, which the website describes as...
