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“Il faut cultiver notre jardin,” —Voltaire
For those of us who don’t do fancy French, this means:
“We must cultivate our garden,” says Pangloss at the end of Voltaire’s Candide.
No sentiment could be truer for women who write. Stop focusing on the whole wide world. Instead, maintain a space that is your own and encourages the fruits of your labors to blossom.
But the process of growing our garden requires the right tools. Reading this blog and learning how to revise your own stories could help you cultivate your garden, obtain peace of mind, and establish your writing legacy. Happy reading and writing!
Looking for a specific writing topic? Search the entire blog below.
But That’s What an Editor’s For!
You tackled writing your first short story, memoir, or novel. And you did it. You found a beginning, middle, and ending. You made yourself write out the entire thing and you completed the process. Now you can pat yourself on the back and grab a glass of wine and relax, right? Your job’s done.
Hold up.
Vague Descriptors: One of These Things is Not Like the Other
Editing teaches you how to move mountains in your writing—literally, you can delete the word mountain from one chapter and drop it into another. I kid, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Shifting around your story can be a panic-inducing process. You’ll worry about losing the pieces of your writing you loved most. And whether or not your words convey the feeling you’re trying to express. But if you keep adding skills to your self-editing toolbox, you’ll learn to move literary mountains.
Show Me Your Process
Identifying your own process is a major undertaking.
Some writers act like theirs was etched into stone by the gods and is so sacred nobody gets to see it. Others pretend like it doesn’t exist at all. Like writing just happens in furious bursts of unexplainable creativity.
That’s crap! Process can be creative and practical. But it must be developed.
And if a writer isn’t talking about their process, it’s because it scares them.