(I Attended My First Writing Retreat; Here’s What I Learned.)

Walking has always been a tool for writers. You may already use short strolls to take a break from the desk or a longer wander to work through an intractable knot in your novel. A walk in your neighborhood may sharpen your powers of observation, while a hike away from the city could inspire new directions in your writing. Henry David Thoreau and William Wordsworth are particularly famous literary walkers. Writers whose books are about walking, such as Bruce Chatwin, Robert Macfarlane, Rebecca Solnit, and Raynor Winn, found book-length inspiration on foot.

Writing retreats are usually centered in one place. A walking writing retreat moves you and your writing ambitions or project forward, literally step by step. A self-guided walking trip, whether by yourself or with selected others, offers freedom and flexibility to choose dates that suit you and an itinerary tailored to your preferences and often budget. Add in the key elements of a DIY writing retreat, and you are off.

Recently I spent 11 days on my own walking writing retreat, following Offa’s Dyke Path which wiggles back and forth across the border between Wales and England. Days 1 and 11 were arrival or departure, I had rest days in Monmouth and Hay-on-Wye and for seven days I walked. I loved the rhythm of scanning for trail markers, opening and closing innumerable gates, eating my pack lunch with a view of deep valleys traced by hedgerows between pastures and fields, the joy of birdsong and butterflies, the horror and heartbreak of a dying lamb. Most walking days I managed at least a brief Morning Pages. On the trail I stopped to scribble thoughts or a potential paragraph into my notebook. I got a good start to a new chapter and mulled a nagging question on what the narrative arc of my book could be.

Planning the Walk

Plan the walking first. Where would you like to go, for how long and when? Alone or with others? It is possible to plan the logistics yourself, booking your own accommodation and organizing luggage transfer. Self-guided walking tour operators make this easier and are cheaper than group and guided walking trips. I booked through a Welsh company which modified their standard itinerary to add in the rest days.

The choice of where can be overwhelming. For its size, North America has few long-distance paths with accommodation at regular intervals. A search for inn-to-inn hikes in the USA provided suggestions in New Hampshire, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Arizona. There are terrific options in Vermont, Quebec, or Newfoundland. Suitable walking routes crisscross Europe and the United Kingdom. The choice can be overwhelming: Focus on a country or region that attracts you and look for paths there. Research beyond social media. Look at walking guidebooks. Most European countries have a national trail organization and official tourism websites have links. I chose Offa’s Dyke Path because I was going to be in England for other reasons, it is not over-touristed and I loved the literary linkages to passing Tintern Abbey praised in a poem by Wordsworth and spending time in Hay-on-Wye, of Hay Festival and bookshop fame.

Details matter, especially the walking distance between accommodations. Be realistic. Better to plan on less than discover that you can’t go the distance. There are a few details that I will be checking before booking future tours. It never occurred to me that there might not be desks in every room. Or that Wi-Fi was unreliable at best in a few locations. Finding food that was not highly processed and included fresh vegetables took up too much time.

Setting Goals and Expectations

Clarity of objectives and realistic goals are essential for any writing retreat, stationary or mobile. List yours. Is it writing a certain number of words a day or a deep dive into editing? Researching a new idea for a book or an article you want to explore? Now review against the walking plans.

My retreat suffered from conflicting objectives. I wanted the challenge of walking big distances over many days. I succeeded, but that satisfying tiredness meant that I was not up to writing after I reached the inn. For my next walking writing retreat, I will plan shorter walking distances and build in more rest-writing days.

Find a balance between selecting a location that appeals to you but is not so interesting that you spend more time sightseeing than working. I was very productive on my rest day in Monmouth. In Hay-on-Wye I got too distracted by all the bookshops and trying to find a real salad to get as much done as I wanted.

Getting on the Trail

I am a fan of packing light, but I negotiated the transfer of two suitcases for my retreat. I wanted to bring notebooks, my laptop, and research books. I carried more changes of clothing than I normally would. I did not want to spend time finding laundromats when I could be writing or coaxing handwashing to dry when I was staying one night. I made sure that I could get to the start location easily—adding a few hours of writing time to the retreat and setting the tone that I was here with a purpose.

If you have never done a walking tour before, do some training in walking longer distances. In the shoes or boots you plan to take. Consider staying two nights in the start location. Spend that first day getting used to navigating: learning to spot signage, read paper or online maps, understand the style of written directions or guidebooks. If it is a foreign country, get an e-sim card or pay the roaming fees to ensure that you have data on the trail. Read all the material sent to you by the tour operator and load any recommended apps on your phone in advance. Know the local emergency call number. This translates to less stress on the trail, more mental room for deep thoughts or the joy of walking.

Be prepared for different weather and trail conditions. Make sure your day pack is big enough for a raincoat and extra layers, but don’t overfill it. I use dry bags (like for a canoe or kayak trip) to compartmentalize pack contents and especially keep the precious notebooks dry. Be open to the unexpected. The terrible experience of the lamb led to a draft submission for literary magazines.

I am starting to plan my walking writing retreat for next year. It will be in the Dordogne Valley in southwestern France. I will explore a trail that meanders with the river, passing through golden limestone villages, under high cliffs, around castles, through walnut groves. There are many hotels with desks in the rooms to choose from. The food will be excellent. And I will write.

The post How (and Why) to Create Your Own Walking Writing Retreat appeared first on Writer's Digest.

You’ve probably heard this saying about the film industry, “It’s not what you know but who you know.” Similarly, in the writing universe, meetings with agents and publishers at writing conferences or book events is a great way to make contacts that lead to exciting opportunities. Developing ideas from personal experience can also be richly rewarding. But when you’re looking for new topics to explore in an article, a blog post, website content, or social media, think about the people you take for granted whose stories may entertain and inspire readers.

(8 Steps for Courting Repeat Clients as a Freelance Writer.)

Does your family doctor make humorous comments to relax patients on the exam table? Was your career path influenced by a favorite—or difficult—teacher? Maybe a distant relative surprised everyone at Christmas by announcing an arctic expedition!

Think about family members, friends, neighbors, and professionals who impact your life in meaningful ways. Can you write about them and encourage readers to appreciate the everyday unique people around us?

Growing up, our family lived in an aging but once-fashionable part of town. Across the street stood a Victorian mansion, the home of 19th-century cereal barons. As kids, my sister, brothers, and I trick-or-treated at the house every Halloween. Beyond the front door in the foyer stood a Renaissance-era knight’s armor positioned upright, creating a fearful backdrop for the stern but kind descendant of the founding family who gave pennies and apples as “treats,” claiming candy was bad for children’s teeth. My father and brother did garden work for Mrs. C. when Dad was temporarily laid off from his pipefitting job. He described the interior of the house with exotic collectables from around the world in amazing detail after making minor repairs inside. The lawn, grounds, and carriage house were kept immaculately groomed, thanks in part to my family’s help.

Many years later, as an adult teaching at the nearby university that inherited the mansion when our elderly neighbor passed away, I wrote an article titled “The House on the Hill,” which was published by our city newspaper. The article describes the house and its owner along with her housekeeper and chauffeur from a child’s perspective. My sister and I recalled exchanging greetings with Mrs. C. across the street when she sat on the porch or watched her whippet hound dash across the lawn. Although our family’s acquaintance with her was limited, we admired her beautiful home and the glamorous parties she hosted for city dignitaries and charitable causes. After publishing my book Behind the Veil in 2007, I made community presentations in Hower House, now a university-owned museum.

When my mother passed away from lung cancer, I had been her caregiver most of the previous year, and her loss hit me hard. I grieved for weeks, and then my husband and I discovered we were expecting another child. At a friend’s suggestion, I joined a community gathering of ladies called Woman-to-Woman. The organizers helped to connect younger women without mothers to older women willing to mentor them. I was matched with a lady in her 70s named Rose, and we quickly bonded. Although our personalities differed in some distinct ways (I was more reticent while she was outspoken), she had much to teach me, and I became an eager learner. Our friendship grew over several years, and she was like a grandmother to our newborn daughter and older son.

After listening to Rose’s exciting stories of growing up in New York during the 1920s and 1930s, I typed her tales about helping parents run a corner store and meeting immigrant customers from around the world along with her memories about news events of that time. The stories were mostly a page or less in length. After arranging 15 of these treasured stories, I had them bound at an office supply store and gave them to her three adult children for Christmas with a copy for Rose as well. They claimed it was their favorite gift! Payment was neither expected nor received; I rejoiced to reciprocate the precious gift of time and nurture she had given me. Not long afterward, I published an article in a family magazine titled “Mother’s Day without a Mother,” to honor her friendship and support. When she passed away a few years later, I gave a funeral eulogy at her family’s request. Rose was truly inspirational!

During this same span of years, my sister and I shared caregiving duties for our father. Becky was an ICU nurse with extensive medical experience, and I consulted her about Dad’s mental and physical symptoms. I learned a great deal about the impact of dementia on patients and their families and realized the typical person might benefit from that knowledge in case they became caregivers for someone with dementia. So Becky and I cowrote an article for a nursing publication with suggestions for communicating with people who have dementia, which was accepted and published. Although we have discussed writing about more medical topics together, so far our schedules have prevented it.

Sometimes inspiration comes from everyday people we take for granted. When my reserved middle-school-age son joined a weekly youth group, we noticed he soon felt comfortable enough to open up with the other kids and join the activities. Eventually, the group leader became a trusted friend in whom our son confided about a few middle school concerns and received helpful advice. I met with the young leader on a few occasions, and his forthright, pleasant manner inspired confidence and trust. I asked if I could write an article about his interpersonal skills for a magazine called Group dedicated to youth leadership. He agreed and humbly approved the article when I showed him. The article was published, and hopefully, readers benefit from his skills and strategies while working with that age group.

In my decades-long teaching career, I published articles on scholarly topics and also about teaching challenges. For example, several Hispanic students from area migrant families enrolled in my classical literature course. I published an article in an academic journal explaining how I taught works by Hispanic authors to help those students feel included and to broaden the literary insights of non-Hispanic students.

Another noteworthy group were the midlife and older students aged 50-plus who contributed so much to class discussions with their life experience and insights. Younger students enjoyed the older ones’ anecdotes that the teens had only read about in history books. A few older enrollees in their 70s came to class for reading pleasure rather than college credit. Admiring their life-long love of learning, I wrote an article about their unquenchable pursuit of knowledge.

I could go on with more examples, but you see what I mean. Even if you can’t think of someone to write about now, you may meet influential or inspiring individuals in the future. According to insuranceinformant.com, humans encounter a staggering number of people over a lifetime, although this varies for each of us:

“On average, we live for 71 years (based on life expectancy), and most of us remember people we meet after age 5. On average, we interact with at least 1 new person daily in cities, 365 days in a year plus leap year days is 365.24. In total, we will meet (71 – 5) x 1 x 365.24 = 27,027 people.

“The average person sees anywhere between 90,000 and 42.5 million faces in their lifetime, likely closer to 3 million. We can remember the estimated figure of 150 friendships over a lifetime (insuranceinformant.com/how-many-people-do-we-encounter-in-our-lifetime.html).”

What are you waiting for? Talk to the people you know or get out there and meet someone with a story to share! Or like Edgar Allan Poe who wrote “William Wilson,” you may see a stranger in public who leaves you reflective or awestruck enough to wax creative.

The post Writing Really Is About Who You Know appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(The Nature and Value of Loneliness for Writers.)

This playbook for my life felt both restrictive and safe. To achieve the ideals of traditional womanhood in evangelical purity culture, I twisted my unruly self into submission, making my body and voice, dreams and ambitions, smaller. This practice may not have fed my creative life, but it did teach me something about working within constraint.

And constraint, as long as there’s still room to breathe, can be exactly what a creative needs.

Take, for example, constraint’s seeming opposite: boundless freedom. I know a bit about that, too. No one’s life can be reduced down to a single narrative, after all. As an amateur writer, it was startling to discover that one of the worst things for my practice and productivity was total freedom. I think of my first summer out of graduate school, a teaching position secure for the fall, and living comfortably (though not well) off of my savings and my husband’s salary. We were renters with no children or pets. Our parents were healthy, occupied, and elsewhere. And my summer days were long stretches filled with few commitments: just me, my notebook, and a pen.

What could I create in those months filled with so much uninterrupted writing time?

As it turns out, not much. Each day, I labored over paragraphs, only to delete them. I tinkered over the structure of individual sentences. What was I writing about? I was bound to discover it in-process. This endeavor felt pure, like I was a true artist. I paused during my mornings to read novels for inspiration. I took long, mid-day runs in hopes that the muse would meet me on the trail. I recovered from those runs on the couch, television on. The day would end, and it would be time to make dinner for my husband who had been hard at work all day. I swallowed shame when I considered how little I had to show after my own day of supposed writing work.

When I began teaching in the fall, I didn’t even have a complete, revised creative piece to show for it. It seemed clear to me then: I was not a writer. I refused to fool myself. If this was how unproductive I was after such an indulgent few months (and truly—I was ashamed at the extent of my own leisure), writing was clearly not the life path for me.

And so, this not-writer threw herself full force into teaching writing. I developed creative prompts and assignments. I scaffolded activities. I mentored students individually. I was quite productive, busy all the time, and even though I would not yet be able to apply it to my own practice, I learned that students produced their strongest work while working within constraints.

Yes—seasoned teachers know this. I never told a student to just write a research paper. I gave them a thematic umbrella. A sample organizational structure. I showed them models, and then I had them really rip those models to pieces. We looked at every stage of a piece of writing. The title—how long is it? The intro—does the writer address the reader? Does the first line make someone laugh or wonder? Is the argument made right up front, or does it take a few paragraphs before it is introduced? And so on—I taught students to deconstruct. Together, we looked at transitions and observed how the writer was moving from one idea to another. And how they kept the reader’s attention and focus along the way.

And then I told my students—okay, class. For homework, go do those things! Follow the constraints you just observed. But, you know, follow them your way. Creatively.

To give my students complete and total freedom would not just have been overwhelming—it would have resulted in poor work. True creativity did not come from totally eschewing constraints, I realized. It came from deconstructing the ones that were present—and then inviting surprise and play within those lines.

Around this same time, I encountered additional constraint in my personal life, too. It wasn’t until my schedule became less free that I found room to move on the page. I gave birth to a baby, and I began incorporating short, 10-minute daily journaling into my morning routine—just to keep my own sanity. And then, I gave birth to another baby. With this additional responsibility, I felt compelled to compose full essays. Then the pandemic happened. Trapped in my home with two toddlers and unstable childcare, my increased constraints resulted in finding the space to write an entire book.

It may seem counterintuitive, but my voice didn’t emerge in the midst of total freedom. I found it as my life became more squeezed, more full of responsibility. Time is slippery, and the creative life is not subject to basic math. Anyone who has ever worked a fixed 9-5 job knows that more time does not equal more productivity.

Of course, there has to be some time. No one can create without a bit of margin. Still, writers need something to rub up against. Friction, tension. Maybe that’s a baby or five. Maybe that’s a bustling medical practice.

Maybe that’s marriage and motherhood.

Most of my writerly obsessions are about the push and pull between freedom and constraint. The constraints of traditional marriage and motherhood could work for me—if I wanted them to—as long as I had room to play. In knowing my expected script—one of helpful submission—I could learn to subvert it, both in my personal life and on the page.

Maybe marriage and motherhood wasn’t a constraint I wanted to impose upon my life. That would be okay—but, I realized as I grew older, that there was no place I could flee to where I would not have to follow some sort of script. In deconstructing my upbringing, I began to see that every societal role included some kind of script. As a teacher, for instance, I followed a script. I worked within the scope of my institution. That involved expectations and rules, hierarchy and submission. It wasn’t like girls in evangelical purity culture were the only ones expected to follow a playbook.

Wouldn’t it be lovely, though, to find a space where I would not be boxed in? At times, I fantasized about total deconstruction. What if I tore it all down? I wanted wide open spaces, fresh air, and room to breathe.

But no enclosure wouldn’t mean absolute freedom. It would simply mean being unhoused. We all know that a home is preferable to none at all—the question was simply, what kind of home did I want to live in?

This is what I learned about myself and creative constraints. It’s not my box that limits me, but the quality of the space inside it. When a place feels imbued with grace and forgiveness, rather than discipline and punishment, art can emerge. This is true no matter the limits a person finds themself up again. Limits, after all, aren’t fundamentally restrictive. Sometimes they can be the very place we go to find tension.

Check out Anna Rollins’ Famished here:

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(How to Turn a True Event Into a Compelling Story.)

I questioned myself every step of the way, doubt echoing through my inner narratives: You’re not a real writer. You don’t have what it takes. Even if you do realize your dreams, you will only ruin them somehow. Things don’t work out for you.

When you have big dreams and big doubts battling with each other, you are bound to find yourself in a cycle of growth and self-sabotage—three steps forward, two steps back. I saw this pattern as proof that I was destined to struggle. Whether it was my creative aspirations or some other aspect of my personal or professional life, I saw my journey through a lens of scarcity. I expected things to go wrong, and when they did, even if it was outside of my control, I believed I was destined to always be a day late and a dollar short.

Over time, I realized something crucial: If I wanted to live this creative life and truly embody what it means to be an artist, then I had to learn to embrace my challenges as creative material and see my life as my work of art, continuously shaping and molding to reveal the truest expression.

I thought: What if my struggles aren’t evidence of inadequacy but a reflection of mindset? What if what I’ve been calling struggle could fuel my creativity instead of suppressing it?

In my book, Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative, I explore what it takes to reclaim creative power in our lives, and I take you with me as I revisit the stories that gave birth to my defeated narratives, showing how I’ve learned to reshape them.

What defeated narratives might be in the way of your writing dreams?

To step fully into the writing life that is meant for you, you will eventually have to confront any inner narratives that are blocking your fullest expression. The following five steps can help you uncover and reclaim the stories standing between you and the writer you want to be.

1. Question Your Assumptions

What could my creative challenges be trying to teach me?

Whether or not you realize it, your relationship with creativity is shaped by the beliefs you carry, many of which are based on opinions, assumptions, and inherited stories rather than your own lived experience.

Do you assume that there’s a right way and a wrong way to be a writer? Maybe you developed the idea that if the words don’t come out perfectly on the first try, they never will. Do you question if your story matters when it’s “all been said before?” Are you discouraged because progress feels slow?

In Story Work, I invite readers to look closely at the beliefs they’ve internalized and whether they are helpful or hurtful. When we get curious about our assumptions, we find fertile ground for planting new perspectives.

2. Face Your Shadows

If I dare to shed light on what I’ve been afraid to face, what new chapter of my creative life could begin?

Reclaiming your story means getting curious about the truths you’ve been afraid to confront and what power they might hold. Often, what we are most hesitant to explore is exactly what will move us forward.

What truths have you been avoiding in your writing? What memories reveal these truths or show where they went into hiding? If you wrote without censoring yourself, how might your voice, confidence, and creative vision expand? Could your writing become a courageous way to face these shadows—not for acknowledgment or publication alone—but for the deep fulfillment that comes from owning every part of who you are?

Exploring our shadows takes courage, but it gives us access to a deeper source of motivation that makes the rewards of writing profoundly personal and less dependent on external approval.

3. Reframe the Wound as Wisdom

How can my struggles become teachers rather than obstacles?

In Story Work, I invite readers to imagine themselves as the main character in a story they are writing, using their imagination to explore different ways their challenges could transform their lives.

What have you learned from the difficulties and experiences you’ve faced as a writer? When you open your mind and look at yourself from a different perspective, how can you reframe what you’ve been through to reveal the wisdom it offers? How does the main character (you) evolve, learn, and grow through these challenges?

Every compelling story promises an arc of transformation that keeps us turning the pages, and your story deserves that same evolution.

4. Grieve and Let Go

What do I need to release in order to make room for what’s next?

When we commit to questioning old narratives and embracing new ways of being, we also have to let go of the versions of ourselves that carried those old beliefs.

The creative process of reclaiming your story allows you to honor and release the identities you’ve outgrown—mindsets that once protected you, paths you didn’t take—surrendering it all to the page.

What roles and personas are you clinging to that are holding you back? What familiar patterns or comfort zones are you ready to leave behind? How might releasing the old create space for new possibilities? Which endings in your past are necessary for the beginnings you want to set in motion?

When you reflect on the stories and memories that illustrate these old identities, you can consciously weave them into a new, evolved narrative. You no longer see them as reasons to feel defeated, but as sources of wisdom and empowerment.

5. Decide What Matters Most

What do my struggles reflect about my values and what matters most to me?

Ultimately, every struggle hides an opportunity to face life’s complexity with courage and creativity—honoring your experiences, learning from them, and using them as the building blocks for a life that aligns with your values and creative vision.

Each challenge can become a teacher, guiding you toward growth, clarity, and fuller self-expression.

What meaning are you assigning to your experiences? How does the story you’ve been telling about your writing journey reflect who you really are and the story you want your life to tell?

When I faced my old struggle narrative with a creative perspective, I saw myself as a character in pursuit of something bigger than myself. When you choose to see yourself as the author of your life, you get to craft a storyline that empowers you, a transformative arc where obstacles lead to progress, and the journey itself is the destination.

Check out GG Renee Hill’s Story Work here:

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(AI and the Craft of Translation.)

Nida, following in the footsteps of Cicero, Jerome, Maimonides, de León, and Dryden, cautioned against an overly rigid word-for-word approach. Effective translation requires more than transferring words from the source language to the target language; it demands sensitivity to the cultures connected to both. Historically, translation was primarily a practical activity, serving religious, commercial, or political needs—often intertwined with national interests. As such, formal translation was also subject to purists who conversely argued in favor of the opposite approach, which finds favor to this day due to the deceptive homogeneity of global consumer culture, a byproduct of five centuries of effective miscegenation.  

The Italian saying, “traduttore, traditore,” meaning “translator, traitor,” captures the tension between these opposing views. This perception has been reinforced over time, with influential thinkers such as Walter Benjamin (1898-1940) declaring the notion of “perfect translation” an impossibility. ¹

Beyond highbrow philosophy, the practice of the craft, however, reveals a more nuanced, utilitarian approach I have come to call formal dynamism, by taking into consideration the following factors: 

a. Form:  

Let’s consider the source text. Is it prose, which follows the natural flow of speech, or verse, which pursues beauty, emotion, and musicality? In my experience, prose requires a balance of approximately 70% formal equivalence and 30% dynamic equivalence. In contrast, verse swings the proportion to 30% formal and 70% dynamic equivalence.  

The acerbic Gilles Ménage (1613-1692) once criticized Nicolas d’Ablancourt’s dynamic translations, asserting that “(dynamic translations)… remind me of a woman whom I greatly loved in Tours, who was beautiful but unfaithful,” ² but there is no reason translations cannot be both sound and playful. The key is striking the best possible balance for each text according to its own nature. 

b. Empathy:  

Mastery of the target language is only the beginning of a translator’s journey. A successful translation will also be defined by our understanding of the prospective audience—ask your editor!—including its age and cultural milieu when trying to get concepts, meaning, and context across. 

A successful translation also hinges on understanding the intended audience—ask your editor! It is essential to consider factors such as age and cultural background to convey concepts, meaning, and context effectively.  

Thus, Steven Pressfield’s perennial advice to writers applies to translators too:  “When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with ev­ery sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?” ³

c. Necessity: 

Were this a self-help, pop psychology piece, “self” would be following “form” and “empathy,” arguing that for you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes you need to love yourself first, but that would be beside the point. 

My mother used to say “La necesidad tiene cara de hereje,” literally “necessity has the face of a heretic”—or, more dynamically, “necessity is the face of heresy.” As a force exerted by circumstance—namely, not being dealt a silver spoon at childbirth—upon those of us in need of regular sustenance, shelter, and clothing, necessity is the main driving force behind most of our professional choices, meaning we normally take those jobs available to us rather than chase the muse.

Some of us will do our best to make good use of the former, bringing the latter into the task at hand. Others will seek work in other areas—ah, the dreaded day job!—to allow themselves the room to passionately pursue inspiration at their own pace. Neither option is inherently superior to the other, but both involve compromises stemming from considerations of income, family responsibilities, office politics (publishing bullpens also suffer from those), and more, which will see us betray the purity of “this little art”—chapeau, Ms. Briggs, chapeau! ⁴

Therefore, while ideally form should take precedence, followed by empathy and necessity, the reality of the craft will see necessity coming first—disregard this at your own peril!—so the matter becomes not if but to which degree a translator will inevitably become a traitor. That’s where my Benedict Arnold Scale comes into play. 

To be continued…  

__________________________

1. Walter Benjamin, La tarea del traductor – Edición Bilingüe (©2021 Ediciones UACh), 65-79. 

2. Amparo Hurtado Albir, La notion de fidélité en traduction (©1990 Didier Érudition), 231. 

3. Steven Pressfield, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It (©2016 Black Irish Entertainment LLC), 5. 

4. Kate Briggs, This Little Art (©2017 Fitzcarraldo Editions). 

The post Formal Equivalence vs. Dynamic Equivalence in the Craft of Translation appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Somewhere along the line, writers started believing that if they aren’t producing, pitching, or publishing 24/7, they’re failing. Between social media updates, book launches, and the never-ending “what’s next?” question, it’s easy to feel like a turkey running around before Thanksgiving dinner—chaotic, flustered, and frankly, exhausted.

(7 Easy Ways to Stay Present and Boost Creativity.)

This “always-on” hustle mentality has become the silent stuffing of the writing world: everyone’s full of it, but no one really wants to admit it’s too much.

When Burnout Hits

When you’re constantly hustling, burnout sneaks up like that distant relative who shows up uninvited and overstays their welcome. You may start skipping creative breaks, pushing deadlines, and losing touch with the reason you started writing in the first place. Suddenly, your passion feels more like an obligation, and the joy that once filled your pages gets replaced with fatigue and frustration.

It’s a recipe for disaster—and no amount of pumpkin pie can sweeten it.

Focus on Gratitude Over Grind

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to step back and reassess. Instead of worrying about your next pitch or post, try focusing on what you’ve already created. Be thankful for your progress, no matter how small. Every paragraph, every idea scribbled on a napkin, every “save as draft” moment counts.

Give yourself permission to slow down and simply be. Productivity is not a personality trait; it’s a choice—and one that should include rest, reflection, and refills (of both coffee and gratitude).

Resetting the Pace

Here are a few ways to step off the hamster wheel and reclaim a healthier writing rhythm:

Schedule creative rest.

Block out Sunday afternoons for something that fills your cup—like baking a new pie recipe, taking a walk among crunchy leaves, or watching your favorite comfort show. Call it “creative recharge time,” and protect it like a deadline.

Unplug intentionally.

Put your phone on “Do Not Disturb,” close your laptop, and step away from the constant scroll. Spend an hour chatting with family over coffee or playing with the dog instead of checking your email for “urgent” updates.

Write for joy again.

Skip the word count goals and write a cozy Thanksgiving scene, a silly poem about cranberry sauce, or a letter to your future self. The point isn’t to publish it—it’s to remember why you love words in the first place.

This Thanksgiving, remember: Even the oven gets a break between batches. You don’t have to be “on” all the time to be a real writer. Rest is part of the process. Gratitude fuels creativity.

So pour another cup of coffee, grab that second helping of stuffing, and remind yourself—it’s okay to slow down. The words will still be there tomorrow.

The post The Pressure to Always Be “On”: Letting Go of the Hustle Mentality appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Phew. End of rant. Thanks for sticking with me!

Putting all the moral and ethical concerns of AI aside, I think another part of why I’m personally so averse to it is because over the past decade, I’ve read so many fantastic, disturbing, imaginative books written about or featuring AI and Big Tech in which they’re misused, abused, or have otherwise gotten out of control. Here are 14 of those books written by actual humans using the gift of creativity combined with the skills they’ve learned, practice, and made their own using their very own brains.

[Descriptions from publisher book cover copy. They are listed in no particular order. WD uses affiliate links, which we entirely see the irony of in a post like this.]

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he codesigns Adam’s personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart—and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan’s subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human—our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control.

Bookshop.org | Amazon

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

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The Deluge by Stephen Markley

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.

From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.

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Culpability by Bruce Holsinger

Set at a summer rental on the Chesapeake Bay, a riveting family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence, from the bestselling author of the “wise and addictive” (New York Times) The Gifted School.

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret that implicates them in the accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

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Playground by Richard Powers

Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book.

In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross.

In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege.

And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father.

Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.

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Version Zero by David Yoon

Max, a data whiz at the social media company Wren, has gotten a firsthand glimpse of the dark side of big tech. When he questions what his company does with the data they collect, he’s fired…then black-balled across Silicon Valley.

With time on his hands and revenge on his mind, Max and his longtime friend (and secretly the love of his life) Akiko, decide to get even by rebooting the internet. After all, in order to fix things, sometimes you have to break them. But when Max and Akiko join forces with a reclusive tech baron, they learn that breaking things can have unintended–and catastrophic–consequences.

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The Circle by Dave Eggers

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

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The Every by Dave Eggers

From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle comes an exciting new follow-up. When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet’s dominant ecommerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous—and, oddly enough, most beloved—monopoly ever known: the Every.

Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire at the Every. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Makazian, they look for the Every’s weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does anyone want what Delaney is fighting to save? Does humanity truly want to be free?
 
Studded with unforgettable characters, outrageous outfits, and lacerating set-pieces, this companion to The Circle blends absurdity and terror, satire and suspense, while keeping the reader in apprehensive excitement about the fate of the company—and the human animal.

Bookshop.org | Amazon

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Bookshop.org | Amazon

Wayward by Chuck Wendig

Five years ago, ordinary Americans fell under the grip of a strange new malady that caused them to sleepwalk across the country to a destination only they knew. They were followed on their quest by the shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them.

Their secret destination: Ouray, a small town in Colorado that would become one of the last outposts of civilization. Because the sleepwalking epidemic was only the first in a chain of events that led to the end of the world—and the birth of a new one.

The survivors, sleepwalkers and shepherds alike, have a dream of rebuilding human society. Among them are Benji, the scientist struggling through grief to lead the town; Marcy, the former police officer who wants only to look after the people she loves; and Shana, the teenage girl who became the first shepherd—and an unlikely hero whose courage will be needed again.

Because the people of Ouray are not the only survivors, and the world they are building is fragile. The forces of cruelty and brutality are amassing under the leadership of self-proclaimed president Ed Creel. And in the very heart of Ouray, the most powerful survivor of all is plotting its own vision for the new world: Black Swan, the A.I. who imagined the apocalypse.

Against these threats, Benji, Marcy, Shana, and the rest have only one hope: one another. Because the only way to survive the end of the world is together.

Bookshop.org | Amazon

The Warehouse by Rob Hart

Cloud isn’t just a company. It’s a solution. Our revolutionary live-work compound provides safe, clean lives—so employees never have to leave.

Paxton never expected to find himself inside these walls, working for the tech company that’s swallowed much of the American economy. But considering what’s left of the world outside . . . well, suddenly what Cloud’s offering doesn’t seem so bad.

Zinnia never thought she’d be here either. For a corporate spy, going undercover at Cloud—where each employee’s every move is tracked—is the ultimate risk. But it also promises the ultimate reward.

And if she has to sacrifice Paxton to claim her prize, that’s a small price to pay . . . isn’t it?

Equal parts page-turning and terrifying, The Warehouse is about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business—and who will pay the ultimate price.

Bookshop.org | Amazon

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.

Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from … wherever he says he is.
 
Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?
 
In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity … and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.

Bookshop.org | Amazon

Plus, for a little hope: Beat the Bots by Jane K. Cleland

Beat the Bots offers science-based creativity techniques that guide you through the writing process to unlock your imagination and create compelling stories that resonate with emotional truth in ways AI can’t match.

Even though artificial intelligence is based on a technology called “machine learning,” computers can’t learn to be creative—but you can. This book will show you the way. AI is, by definition, derivative, not creative. It can’t bring rational judgment to determine the quality or value of its work. When you bring those capabilities to your writing, your stories will touch readers’ hearts and minds.

Just as real food is better for us than processed food, and actual social interactions are more meaningful than social media, when it comes to writing your story, artificial intelligence can’t replicate your individual human intelligence, imagination, and sensibility. Technical wizardry can’t tell your story. Only you can do that. Your uniqueness is what separates you from a chatbot, and explains why you can’t be replaced by an algorithm. You’ll succeed because you’re human, not in spite of it.

Through engaging FAQs, invaluable “Pro Tips,” and “AI Weighs In” revelations, you’ll be able to apply the writing lessons and creativity tactics to all aspects of storytelling, bringing your distinctive vision and voice to your projects in ways AI simply can’t. Thought-provoking, science-based guided exercises challenge you to apply each chapter’s lessons to your own writing. Whether you’re writing a novel, literary nonfiction, or a memoir, you’ll be able to write stories that are fresh and compelling—your stories—and those are the books that publishers want and readers crave. That’s how you’ll beat the bots.

         Bookshop.org | Amazon

The post Cautionary Tales: Books About AI and Big Tech appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(7 Tips for Writing a Near-Future Dystopian Novel.)

It wasn’t like that King-Kong-sized eucalyptus tree with frightening measurables—six-seven stories tall, five-plus-ton heft, 747-engine-thick trunk—held a grudge against me. Sure, it was a leaf-dropping, rat-harboring nuisance, but I deluded myself its low center of gravity assured it was virtually cemented into the earth. Looking back to January, when two raging wildfires torched a destructive path through Altadena, California, near where I live, and Pacific Palisades out near the coast, I should’ve revisited those lazy assumptions.

Now, jump back to the day before the blazes ripped through bone-dry Los Angeles. A ferocious windstorm, with gusts reaching near-hurricane levels, battered the landscape, whipping around everything not lashed down. With tragicomically bad timing, we’d scheduled yard work to install outdoor turf that very morning, and none of my appeals to the supervisor about the hazard posed by the arboreal monster, which was shaking like I’d never seen it, persuaded him to yank his crew. For him, time was money. For me, after they finished without injury, it was time for self-crucifixion.

You should’ve done something about the nightmare eucalyptus! Notified the city. Rallied the neighborhood. No one’s going to label you a Karen for trying to protect someone.

It didn’t take a mathematician to calculate that if that thing crashed down onto somebody’s roof, you wouldn’t be calling an ambulance afterward, only the coroner’s truck. Another reason I should’ve sprung to action was the bitter irony of the situation. One of the tenants on the property anchored by a Davy-Crockett-esque log cabin and multiple overgrown, under-trimmed trees, should’ve known better. Him being a Nobel-Prize-winning, Caltech physicist and all.

By sundown that awful day, the gales hadn’t slowed. They’d accelerated in the suburbs near Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, jacking up my sense of foreboding when I was already distracted by another urgent matter. The deadline for my second novel, Later Days was fast approaching, and like most writers, my emotional attachment translated into a feverish compulsion to massage every syllable. Boiled down, one side of me, the damn-the-torpedoes, former-reporter side, hankeredto wander outside by my sentimental man-cave shed with Rigby to gauge the danger level. Colliding with that was another charged impulse, except this didn’t feel self-originated. It was, best I can describe it, a faint, almost disembodied murmur urging me to forget that tree and remember my manuscript.

“Put your mind there,” the voice seemed to whisper. “Buff out the rough edges.”

So, two psychological tractor beams, one decision. I heeded the voice, returning to my desk about 6 pm to polish a couple sentences in a tale about a rocky friendship that survived a Lord-of-the-Flies adolescence in the late-1970s, just maybe not a jinxed adulthood during Y2K. Still unhappy with how I described the sway of testosterone at the all-boys, prep school at the heart of my book, I experimented with phraseology, finally landing on … “teenage horndoggery.” (As if my literary heroes Fitzgerald, Irving, or Roth would ever conjure teenage horndoggery.) I hit save on my computer in my home office and spilled onto the family room couch with my wife.

Predictably on TV, it was wall-to-wall weather-apocalypse chronicling the wind damage and the onset of what’d be the Eaton and Palisades fires. Then whack! Before we could even doomscroll a minute came a mortifying jolt that shook our house’s foundation, a jolt you also felt in your bones.

One shaky step at a time, we edged into the backyard gone pitch black after the yard work knocked out our outdoor lights. Using our iPhone flashlights, we got the disastrous picture anyway. That paranoia-stoking eucalyptus was no longer blocking the sky with its top-heavy foliage because it was no longer standing. Nope, it’d tumbled sideways, barely missing another neighbor’s house with young children inside, to land 30 feet from our roofline. We now had its massive trunk resting precariously atop our suddenly-crumpled fence, the tree’s minty, sinewy branches so vast they swallowed up half the backyard. We each gave a little yelp and pivoted, though not before I glimpsed a sinister, orange glow of flame on the mountainside.  

I lost track of time afterwards, for my heart was up near my tonsils and my back was slicked in cold sweat. My subconscious pegged it before I did: Rigby, and I were damn fortunate to be alive! Yet epiphany wasn’t explanation, and every atom in me needed to know why we’d not been out there? Was it raw, good fortune that rerouted me inside to fuss over my book, rather than exposing myself to a potential killing field? Serendipity by any other name?

Or, I couldn’t help wondering, was there a more farfetched reason, a logically preposterously reason smacking of divine intervention? Buckle up, for here’s where it gets weirder. In shifting from a coming-of-age tale to an adult, life-coming-apart saga, Later Days plants its antiheroes—one a diehard atheist, the other a disenchanted believer—in a critical scene at a Near Death Experience support group. At the climax, after one character slips his mortal coil, his longtime pal sinks into all-too-familiar grief until he’s contacted from, let’s just say, a scientifically unverifiable address.

The paradox of it all, reality-reflecting-art-refracting-my-close-call, wasn’t lost on my dizzied brain. I’d written about Near Death Experience only to experience my own. I’d fabricated a character based on a real-life, ex-classmate, who sadly died before this novel was published, compelling me to wrap my heard around the lulu possibility he’d swooped in as my guardian angel to shelter me. If this was a literary feedback loop, I’d created a character with uncanny powers, then something cast me in a meta-fiction drama where I’m rescued from the ether. I flashed to Paul McCartney’s story about his dead mother appearing in a dream, cooing her son during an emotionally stormy time to “Let it Be.” Then again, she delivered a message of peace, not a shoulder tap her son was in peril.

I got a daylight eyeful of the carnage when back from mandatory evacuation. How the meat of the creamy trunk had obliterated my shed as if a pissed-off Paul Bunyon stomped it. Its splintered roof. The buckled walls. Had my four-legged BFF and I been beneath the tree when Mother Nature blew it down, we would’ve been flesh pancakes.

In the months afterward, careening between survivor’s guilt given the massive loss of life and property here, and raw gratitude, I at last stopped wrestling with myself. Ended my one-man debate society. If my imagination could drum up a character able to bend space for his arc, why shouldn’t a message I believe was a miracle, not magical thinking, bend my own?

Check out Chip Jacobs’ Later Days here:

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Have you ever birthed seven stories in a weekend? I hadn’t either. Until one miraculous summer Saturday. My publication date loomed. My developmental editor had just tossed significant chunks of my manuscript. “Kill your darlings!” she said.

With my back against a wall of deadlines, I opened the revised manuscript for the collection we were shaping. What struck me most wasn’t the pieces my editor had cut, but the one she had moved to the prized first slot: a letter to Sgt. Bryan Anderson, a Purple Heart veteran who had generously offered his time as I was developing my Goodbye Orchid trilogy.

Meeting Bryan changed me. He had lost both legs and his left hand in Iraq, but not his humanity or humor. After visiting his California home, I wrote him a private letter, not intended for readers, only to thank him for his strength and grace. But as my editor recognized, that letter was different. It was intimate, raw, and real.

And that’s when I realized: In honoring him, I had discovered a form that unlocked something in me. Letters.

A decade ago, actor Mary-Louise Parker published Dear Mr. You, a memoir in letters to the men who shaped her life. I recalled loving her tender and witty letters that shone with vulnerability. That was the turning point.

Why Epistolary Writing Unlocks Authenticity

That format became the cornerstone of my collection, Dear Orchid, and it taught me a lesson I want to share with other writers: Sometimes the best way to unlock your voice is through a letter.

For me, the epistolary form created an instant shift in tone and perspective. My voice rang clearer, my memories surfaced faster, and my writing gained intimacy and immediacy.

Here are some reasons why:

1. Built-in Audience of One. When you pen a letter, you aren’t writing for an amorphous audience. You’re speaking directly to someone whom you know and can imagine clearly.
2. Second-Person Perspective. By default, letters use “you.” This second-person voice creates instant closeness. Readers feel spoken to, even if the letter isn’t literally meant for them.
3. Permission to Be Honest. Letters are intimate, meant for two people, anchored in shared memory. They speak directly, heart-to-heart.

How It Worked for Me

Once I recognized this, the floodgates opened. The next essay became a letter to my childhood best friend: an ode to summer days spent chasing honeysuckle, and a eulogy for her violent death at the hands of the man who fathered her children.

A trusted reader scrawled only: “Wow. Powerful. No notes.”

Memories emerged, from small to seismic. My fingers began to fly over the keyboard. Formative moments unlocked. I recalled stories that I had told no one.

I remembered meeting a neighborhood man at our community soda machine, right in the middle of my biggest heist as an 11-year-old—fishing quarters from the coin return. He appeared, thirsty, holding a secret of his own. For reasons I never learned, he didn’t talk. Despite our differences in age, gender, and ability, we became unlikely friends. Writing about him later, I realized how much he had taught me about empathy. I dedicated the finale of Goodbye Orchid to him.

From there, the stories tumbled out from my core memories. The luna moth which I had inadvertently sentenced to death as an entomology specimen came back to life on the page. Childhood memories evolved to teenaged ones. My manuscript diverted us to roller rinks and dark woods at midnight.

Then, I found my fingertips itching to write about my college days. As soon as “Dear Film Jim” emerged, a story about the young man I met in film class, I recalled Mary-Louise Parker’s story “Dear Blue,” about a barefoot wanderer whose freedom was intoxicating. Re-reading it, I thought of my own shoeless Surfer Dude. That parallel unlocked another story I hadn’t planned to write.

I kept returning to this model: Write to someone, not about them.

The Experiment That Failed (and Then Didn’t)

Not every attempt worked. One of my last letters was to my “secret aunt” who was separated from her parents when China’s Communist Party closed borders in 1949. My first draft fell flat. My editor’s note was clear: “Get more personal.”

I resisted. It wasn’t my story.

But after reflection, I realized I could inhabit it differently. Instead of writing to her, I could write as her—in first person, stepping into her life. I interviewed family, researched the “Great Leap Forward,” and wrote “A Handful of Rice,” a story about hunger, resilience, and survival.

That shift worked. My editor returned with a phrase I’d come to cherish: No notes.

5 Techniques to Try

If you’re intrigued, here are some ways to experiment with epistolary writing:

1. Start Small. Write a one-page letter to someone who influenced you. Don’t overthink structure. Just begin with “Dear…” and go.
2. Try Different Audiences. Write to: A childhood friend you lost touch with; a teacher who changed your trajectory; a character in your novel; someone who hurt you; someone you never met but wish you had.
3. Shift Perspective. After writing one draft to someone, rewrite it as them, speaking back to you. The act of inhabiting another voice can spark empathy and discovery.
4. Mine Your Memory Bank. The act of writing a letter often triggers forgotten vignettes. Don’t dismiss the minute moments. Small stories often reveal the deepest truths.
5. Use Letters for Character Work. Fiction writers: write a letter from your protagonist to someone they love or don’t. You’ll learn things about their values and vulnerabilities you might not discover otherwise.

What Letters Teach Us About Writing

At its heart, letter writing is about connection. It strips away performance, leaving only relationship, and truth. That’s what readers respond to. That’s why the letter to Sgt. Anderson became the opening of Dear Orchid, and why so many of the pieces that followed resonated with my editor.

Even if you don’t keep the letter format in your final draft, the act of writing one can unlock material and authenticity you wouldn’t otherwise access.

Time to Experiment

As I wrote, the letters kept surprising me. One led to another, and before long I had seven new chapters, each more personal than I thought I was capable of. Some stories were poignant. Others joyful. All were true in ways that mattered.

So, dear fellow author, join me in trying this approach. Next time you’re stuck, instead of staring at a blank page, picture a face. Type “Dear…” and let the words tumble out. The inspiration and intimacy of your letters may surprise you.

Wishing you courage, creativity, and connection, on the page and beyond.

Check out Carol Van Den Hende’s Dear Orchid here:

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(Things Writers Should Know.)

Popular writing with medical content abounds. As a medical editor and medical-journalism teacher, I know all too well the errors common in such writing. And as the author of Medical Editing: A Guide to Learning the Craft and Building Your Career, I’m accustomed to showing how to correct such errors.

Of course, it’s better to avoid such errors than for an editor to correct them. So, from the standpoint of a medical editor, here are 10 items for writers to know.

1. Know who’s who in the health professions.

A common error is to confuse the terms psychiatrist and psychologist. Ditto for ophthalmologist and optometrist. In each case, the former is a physician, the latter a nonphysician specialist. Check that individuals and professions are identified accurately. Also, in deciding on content and interviews, realize that not just doctors and nurses take part in health care. A handy guide to healthcare occupations appears in the occupational outlook handbook from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

2. Know to avoid common redundancies.

A frequent mistake is to write something like “Dr. Barbara Gastel, MD” or, for a veterinarian, “Dr. Susan Aiello, DVM.” Including both “Dr.” and the abbreviation for the doctoral degree is redundant. Use one or the other. Often, the target publication (or the style manual it uses) will say which convention to follow. Or if you’re self-publishing, choose one convention and stick with it.

Another redundancy is repetition of words already represented in an abbreviation. For example, people sometimes write HIV virus infection.Because HIV stands for “human immunodeficiency virus,” writing virus after HIV is redundant.

3. Know what to capitalize (and what not to).

Overcapitalization is common in medical writing. For example, I often see sentences such as “Dr. Li, a Pediatrician who completed a fellowship in Rheumatology, often sees patients who have Juvenile Arthritis.” However, terms for medical specialists shouldn’t be capitalized. Ditto for names of fields. And ditto for the names of medical conditions, even though their abbreviations (such as JA for juvenile arthritis) are in all capitals.

4. Know how to present eponyms and toponyms correctly.

Sometimes the name of a medical condition includes the name of a person (and so is called an eponym) or a place (and so is a toponym). In that case, the name of the person or place is capitalized, but the rest of the term is not. Thus, for example, proper form is to write Down syndrome (named after physician John Langdon Down) and Lyme disease (named after Lyme, Connecticut).

Perhaps you’ve noticed that sometimes eponyms appear as possessives (as in Alzheimer’s disease) and sometimes they don’t (as in Alzheimer disease). Different publications follow different conventions in this regard. Medical journals tend to use the non-possessive form, in keeping with American Medical Association style. Some other publications favor the possessive form or use the possessive for some eponyms but not others. It can be worth checking which form the publication (or the style manual that is uses) favors.

5. Know what forms of drug names to use.

Drugs have generic names (official names) and brand names (chosen by the companies marketing them). For example, ibuprofen is a generic name; the corresponding brand names include Advil and Motrin. Generic names aren’t capitalized, but brand names are. Many publications prefer using mainly or solely generic names. However, exceptions exist. For example, if readers might know the brand name but not the generic one, it can make sense to include the brand name on first mention (example: “sildenafil, commonly known as Viagra”). A trustworthy source of easy-to-understand information on drug names and much else is the website MedlinePlus, from the National Institutes of Health.

6. Know to avoid common stereotypes.

In writing about medical topics, as elsewhere, try to avoid gender-related and other stereotypes. For instance, avoid wording that assumes that all doctors are male and all nurses are female, or that all older adults are grandparents. The many resources available on minimizing bias in language can aid in this regard.

7. Know how to write respectfully about people with diseases and disabilities.

Typically, use “person first” wording—for example, “people with diabetes” rather than “diabetics”—because the medical condition does not define the people’s identity. However, if a person being written about prefers another designation (for example, “autistic person”), use it. Also, beware of melodramatic language such as “victim” or “suffers from”; normally, use more neutral wording, such as “person with” or “has.” Sources of guidance include the Disability Language Style Guide.

Wording on assistive technologies also bears checking. For example, “is confined to a wheelchair” generally is best recast as “uses a wheelchair,” as wheelchairs tend to liberate rather than confine those with limited mobility.

8. Know the differences between commonly confused terms.

Avoid interchanging commonly confused terms. Three main offenders:

• patient/case: A patient is a person receiving medical care. A case is an instance. Thus, “They treated 100 patients who had this disease” but “They analyzed 100 cases of this disease.”
• incidence/prevalence: The word prevalence refers to cases existing at a given time, whereas incidence refers to newly occurring cases. For example, if 5% of writers have colds today, the prevalence rate in this group today is 5%. And if 43% of writers will develop colds in the next year, the incidence rate will be 43%.
• signs/symptoms: Signs are objective manifestations observable by others. Symptoms are subjective phenomena observable only by the person experiencing them. For example, fever, swelling, and redness are signs; headache, nausea, and itching are symptoms.

9. Know (at least a little) basic statistics.

“Please don’t say I need to check the math,” a medical-editing student once told me. For popular writing about medicine, you’ll rarely need to deal with higher math. But a little statistical savvy is in order. For example: Do the numbers add up? Do the percentages make sense? Do the averages seem reasonable? Also, have an idea what statistical significance refers to.

In lay terms, being statistically significant means that the finding probably wasn’t a fluke. However, statistical significance doesn’t necessarily mean clinical significance; a difference can be real but too small to have medical impact. For an easy-to-understand briefing on statistics, see the chapter “Making Sense of Science Stats” in the KSJ Science Editing Handbook.

10. Know, or check, the names of medical institutions.

Common errors include writing Center for Disease Control (instead of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), National Institute of Health (instead of National Institutes of Health), and John Hopkins University School of Medicine (instead of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine). Check the names of medical institutions you mention.

Also note: Although the first two entities listed above have names plural in form (because they have multiple components), they take singular verbs, as they are single entities. Thus, for example, correct wording is to say, “The National Institutes of Health is based in Bethesda, Maryland.”

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