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Blog
“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.
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.
Healing vs. Processing: How to Use Your Trauma for Big Transformations
I’m not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV.
I’m also not a licensed therapist, so none of this should be taken as medical advice. (If you fear that writing about a traumatic event may re-traumatize you, please contact a therapist that can safely guide you through the process.) What I am is a writer—one who has firsthand experience on how the writing process has the power to transform grief and trauma.