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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.
Use This Empathy Check When Writing Your Problematic Characters
It’s been long established that your memoir shouldn’t be filled with Disneyesque do-good princesses and wicked villains. That’s lazy writing.
You know and I know that people have nuance. So how should you handle a bad guy in your memoir?
The Power of Envy: You Gorgeous Green-Eyed Monster You
I have something scary to tell you and it’s not even Halloween yet.
Okay, so we’re not talking Stephen King kind of scary. But I think it’s something we women rarely admit to and that makes it feel like a taboo subject.
Envy.
That’s right, the green-eyed monster. Ever have to face her? Maybe you spotted her in your own mirror?
I have.
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.