Hello! I’m Linnea, and editing is one of my oldest loves. I’ve been a fan of the Chicago Manual of Style since I was eleven (no joke!), and I’m here to help you put your best foot forward with squeaky-clean prose. I offer two services: copy editing and sensitivity reading. Please note that I am not a developmental editor—outside of sensitivity reading, I specialize in the nitty-gritty details of punctuation, grammar, and phrasing, not big-picture story components like plot and pacing.

Why should you trust me? Well, before going freelance, I spent two years as the in-house editor of two quarterly publications that were nearly a hundred pages each and had a combined circulation of over 200,000. I was also a volunteer editor at the online magazine Twin Cities Geek for four and a half years. In college, I worked at my school’s writing center and also did such a thorough copy edit of my mom’s fourth book that her publisher asked if I wanted to freelance for them.

Services Offered

Copy editing

Copy editing is the next step when you’ve got a draft you’re happy with in terms of things like plot, pacing, and character for fiction and memoir, or structure and argument for most other nonfiction. You like the story you’re telling or the case you’re making and feel good about the way you’ve put the pieces together, which means now is the point where it makes sense to start checking your punctuation and grammar, as well as specific wording. This is an important step to take before self-publishing—even if you think your prose is grammatically perfect, it’s hard to get enough distance from your own writing to find those last pesky typos.

Fee: $0.012/word, so $120 per 10,000 words

Sensitivity reading

I am autistic, and autism is one of my special interests, so I bring both personal experience and a broad perspective when I do a sensitivity read. If you’re writing an autistic character, particularly if you’re not autistic, I can help point out where your characterization strays into the stereotypical or if there are common parts of the autistic experience that you’re missing.

With this service, I will give feedback via comments directly on your manuscript document as well as writing a letter with more holistic feedback after I’ve finished reading. I also offer an optional half-hour video call after you’ve received my feedback to talk about potential manuscript changes, answer your questions, and generally talk in more detail about any feedback you found confusing.

Fee: $0.006/word, so $60 per 10,000 words

Interested in working together?

Get in touch! Or, if you’re not sure, read some testimonials first!

Statement on AI

I do not use artificial intelligence (AI) in my editing, and I will not edit text that was produced with AI. Generative AI has been trained on stolen creative work, uses huge amounts of water and energy even for simple queries, often makes up false “facts,” and tends toward the average, with all the bigotry and mediocrity that implies. Moreover, if you couldn’t be bothered to write it, why should I bother to edit it or anyone else bother to read it?