Okay here is my piece. I am trying to write an About page for my substack. It is feeling very heavy and I am looking for ways to make it a bit lighter. Here is what I have so far:
I’m Emmeline Tyler – a writer, linguist and mother living in Naarm (Melbourne) with my husband and child.
Everyone I know seems to be launching from crisis to crisis. Our mental health struggles reflect the litany of disasters broadcasted daily from our devices.
Community and connection is both the healing antidote to oppressive forces, and also our greatest defence against them.
We are all suffering under systems that weren’t built to facilitate flourishing; struggling just to get by. We are worrying about threats to our collective future but mostly too overwhelmed to know how to move forward in the face of them. Most of us, most of the time, get stuck when thinking about those big issues and try to push those scary thoughts and feelings down just so we can get our work done, keep the kids alive, and make it through the next week.
One thing I have learned about myself is that I am constitutionally incapable of pushing down the scary thoughts and feelings and getting on with my week (this probably has something to do with my being autistic). I am compulsively reading, observing, processing, and – unless I want to wind up very mentally unwell – letting it all out in the form of writing or other expression. Through this newsletter, I share my output with the hope that others can benefit.
Free subscribers will receive a weekly email newsletter article, usually on the topics of anti-capitalism, climate change, a combination of those topics, or something tangentially related. Also books (always books). Comments will be open to facilitate a sense of community.
Hi Emmeline! Thank you for joining us today! It sounds like you're trying to accomplish a lot here in your About Page, and I think your instinct to make it lighter is tapping into something important. I'm actually working on a piece around editorial branding on Substack right now, and here's some of the guidance I'm culling together for About pages. (I hope it's OK to use this as a sneak peek opportunity. I do think it'll be helpful!)
This is where your personality and vision for your writing should be allowed to shine. I have some preferred structures that I use with clients that I think work particularly well, but I always like to see About pages that speak directly to the reader and describe the reader back to themselves. It’s a bit like diagnostic writing—if you’re here, you likely experience X. About pages should utilize subheadings to break information up (scrolling for easy reading is important here). Here's a structure to consider for About pages:
I don’t have a next piece in progress yet, but I’d love to share the opening paragraphs of my latest Substack post. I think it has a lot of the strengths and weaknesses characteristic of my writing, and i may apply further edits, even though it’s already posted. My current subscriber list is less than 20, so I hope my writing will have more exposure in the future than it has right now, which could warrant further edits.
Caretaking
A Story of Pathological Demand Avoidance
At the core of my social existence is a contradiction: social thirst coupled with social recoiling. It is a contradiction that makes enemies out of loved ones, that weaves hostility into ordinary interactions. There is, in fact, no social bond that does not feel like an enemy’s lair, where I often slip wordlessly into shadows, feeling nothing in my body but the terror of being seen. Even as a mother, I am stalked prey.
I always wondered how my body became the site of enemy formation at the age of three. I woke up every morning ready to fight the first demand that descended on me. I bit my siblings, screamed in rage, and dared my mother to draw up a boundary so that, looking her in the eye, I could transgress it. Not a single “no” slipped past my body unfought. There were daily tantrums, daily spankings, until my mother’s god stopped her in her tracks and whispered, “your daughter is not your enemy.”
My mom was raising five neurodivergent children without resources or diagnoses. As a cycle breaker, she was learning to parent from scratch. Her evangelical environment offered authoritarian parenting techniques; but when she met the ferocity of my resistance, she began to pioneer a path toward neuro-affirming parenting. She didn’t call it neuro-affirming parenting—that language didn’t exist then. She called it listening to God—which is probably why god became the first psychological space in which I learned to practice self-compassion.
My mother’s god listened to the bodies of her children.
Yet I still resisted her hugs, and whispered back at her loving affirmations, “don’t love me.”
“She pioneered a path toward what is now called neuro-affirming parenting”.
I absolutely love the last sentence. Experiencing ‘I love you’ as a demand is so powerful. It really ties in with the first paragraph and the whole piece. But it feels underutilised somehow. Very powerful concept but the writing doesn’t quite carry it. I feel bad giving this feedback because I can’t think of how to improve it. I’m putting it here anyway because I’m hoping someone else (or you!) can use this feedback as a jumping off point.
Thanks Emmeline! That actually is really helpful. In these first few paragraphs I was trying to paint a picture with very little material--my own memories before age five are almost nonexistent (at least in narrative form. Parenting has been thick with emotional flashbacks), so I’m working mostly with anecdotes my mom told over the years. I actually hadn’t made the connection that I was experiencing “I love you” as a demand, which may be why that connection doesn’t come through. It’s a detail my mom has often talked about, which I’ve associated with a deep sense of alienation--but I hadn’t identified the specific PDA mechanism you’re observing. I think I may be able to make that connection more coherent. Thanks again!
At the core of my social existence is a contradiction: thirst coupled with recoiling. It makes enemies out of loved ones and weaves hostility into ordinary interactions. There is no social bond that does not feel like an enemy’s lair. I often slip wordlessly into shadows, feeling nothing but the terror of being seen. Even as a mother, I am stalked prey.
I cut some words for you!
Reading it, I thought of a bunch of publications you should subscribe to. I'm glad I checked your profile first, because you already subscribe to them all! We know who we are.
Thank you! I didn’t apply my 15% cut to this piece, because the 1-2 hours it takes just didn’t open up, but what a difference it makes! (BTW I checked and you cut the word count by almost exactly 15%). It’s funny, because I really labored over this paragraph, kept coming back to it, trying to make it less clunky, trying to use the word “social” less than 5 times (I got it down to 4; you trimmed it to 2). But a really helpful shift takes place when I switch gears from trying to make my piece *better* to trying to make it *shorter*. I become less of an attached writer and more of a pragmatic reader. I’m turning your feedback into a pitch for my favorite editing rule, but it really does work. If you can’t afford an editor and haven’t found a writer’s group, it may be the next best thing?
(For anyone reading I described 15% cut rule above: When I was in grad school my last edit, out of necessity, was to reduce the length of my piece by 15% (to meet the word count). I never cut whole paragraphs, I just went sentence by sentence, snipping words. Occasionally I’d come to 2 or 3 sentences that could be lopped. And at the end of this process I always felt like my papers went from good to radiant--like how did I ever write that? So I’ve tried to keep up the discipline, of cutting my writing by 15% at the end.
Amanda, you are a wonderful, generous human. I appreciate you!
This is way out of my comfort zone, but Kimia dared me. Well, not exactly, but if she can do it...
Anyway, here's a random paragraph (not the worst, are you kidding me?) from a work in progress on "back to the office" for your editing pleasure.
"Before COVID, downtown office culture companies were offering everything from free breakfasts to rest pods to encourage people to spend all their waking hours in the office. Home for many was a studio apartment in a five over one - named for a style of residential construction with five floors of wood over one floor of concrete. With a high density per square mile, no or limited parking, no public space, and limited room for entertainment, tenants were a captive audience for the gyms, bars, and restaurants in the ground floors. With COVID and the shuttering of offices and places of entertainment, the shallow roots of that lifestyle became clear. Many who were made to work from home took the opportunity to move out of the city to more fully diverse communities where they could build a richer social life and put down some real roots. In the drive to save the downtown economy, it's worth asking: whose economy are we trying to save?"
Hi John! Thanks for sharing this! It's a little tough to jump into the middle of a piece without broader context, but I think there are some ways to shift to using the active voice and a little tighter writing:
Before COVID, the carrots dangled in the faces of employees were plentiful: free breakfasts? Rest pods? Downtown office culture was focused on one thing: encouraging people to spend all their waking hours in the office.
Home for many was a studio apartment in a "five over one" — a style of construction with five floors of wood over one floor of concrete. The thinking behind this residential style was intentional, if not claustrophobic: with a high density per square mile, no or limited parking, no public space, and limited room for entertainment, tenants were a captive audience for the gyms, bars, and restaurants in the ground floors.
When COVID shuttered offices and places of entertainment, the shallow roots of this lifestyle became clear. Many who worked from home left the city and moved into more fully diverse communities where they could build a richer social life and put down some real roots. In the drive to save the downtown economy, it's worth asking: whose economy are we trying to save?"
Thanks, Amanda. My bad for not following your directions and telling you the kind of help I was looking for, but you got it.
I had the same feeling about active voice. It reads passive, but on checking, the verbs were active! I'm thinking it's maybe because of the lack of agency. I've written these sentences with inanimate objects as the grammatical subjects. How about I try to turn those around to put the people back in charge of the sentences?
No worries at all! We writers like to get our undies in a knot about active voice, when I do think sometimes objects can be active and lively as well. In this case, you probably have some great imagery just waiting to jump in. The misery of the "five over one" lifestyle almost begs for some stomach-curling, robot imagery! You got this one, John...
Thanks Amanda. Passive voice was used so much when the lab was where I worked - the beaker was placed on the bunsen burner - that the habit is hard to break. Is what I did there visible to you?
This paragraph read passive, even if it wasn't! You've helped a lot. Thank you!
Feedback Requested: I am so unhappy with how I conclude this piece. It seems to just "drop off a cliff" vs. come to a close. I am not sure how to fix it.
Paragraph Closing:
Often, we are instructed by society only to show anger and toughness when we are working with others, particularly in sports. Anytime any other emotion boils to the surface, we are told, “don’t be a sissy,” “No one likes a crybaby,” or “Tough it out” *(pejorative phrases in which the discussion is not on topic).* So whenever I felt these emotions, it eventually felt “wrong” to hold or express them. So I hid them. Do that enough and eventually, you will be convincing yourself that they don’t exist.
Wrong.
They manifest in other ways. Bad decisions. Mistreatment of others. Being “aggressive” in a meeting, etc. They will grow - you just won’t see them until it's too late and they are wreaking havoc on your life.
However, when I started to doubt my internal dialogue, I was forced to seek to understand it. When I worked to understand it, I became compassionate towards myself and others. Who can entirely condemn another’s thinking when they’re not entirely certain they’re right?
This uncertainty gave me the courage to “saddle up” and face things that I ignored. After all, it’s the questions that we strive to answer that often teach us the most.
Thanks so much for chiming in, Jake! Ending essays can be such a huge hurdle to get across. I think sometimes we need permission to not wrap things up tidily ... and then maybe offer a list of reader questions to launch a conversation instead.
In your writing sample, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a way to insert your own experiences with restricting anger and toughness to a sports-only setting. In what setting did you hear "No one likes a crybaby?" Can you describe that setting; how you felt; if it caught you off guard? Did it morph into an internalized message you carried for a long time?
These are just a few thoughts. So glad to have you here!
Good call out! The whole essay is actually my internalization. For example, here is the opening of the piece. Should I still include some thoughts about internalized in this context?
“Why are you such a dumbass? What’s wrong with you?”
“A lot. I’m pretty much a f**kup.”
“Oh, you finally realize it? About damn time!”
“I don’t feel like I can do it all the time. It’s a lot to be out there.”
“Ahh, so you’re a lazy f**kup. That’s even worse. It’s not that hard.”*
“It was hard at the time. I couldn’t get it going for myself.”
“Ok, well, glad to know you’re a softhearted baby who can’t do anything. It’s not that complicated.”
”I know, I know. I am trying to get better.”
“You have been trying forever. You need to DO, not try.”
“Ya, you’re right.”*
A year ago, I realized I was in an abusive relationship…
Hey Jack! I really appreciate you joining in so enthusiastically today. I'd like to send through a 30-day paid comp to The Editing Spectrum. What is your email address? (This will add you to my list!)
Thanks for this extra info! I think the long list of questions makes it somewhat challenging to create an engaging flow for readers. I think the piece could benefit from describing a point in time where one of these accusations showed up -- the person, the setting, the impact. And then decide which phrase comes next, sort of like, “Then there was Coach Melville in middle school..” And perhaps shift into, “one day all the voices started to sound the same ... “
One thing jumped out for me. The word wrong is in a one word paragraph for emphasis. It also appears in quotes in the previous paragraph. Maybe change the first instance to something like inappropriate.
Hi all (and thanks for do this!). Here's the opening to my latest MS. Open to any and all feedback and would love brutal honesty :)
There’s a wolf on the loose, but I spend my days trying to catch mice. Some locals cook a chicken, arrosto, in an effort to placate him.
Him, her, I assume male. Women don’t roam the world alone, stalking, hunting, killing. Whole villages don’t fall prey to hysteria because they fear females.
I’ve caught three mice this week. Capture. Release. Capture. Release. It could be the same one, cunning, coming back to snack on the treats I leave out to lure them. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’m being invaded. My home, infested with rodents, a tide of vermin moving under floorboards, while the eyes of the wolf watch me every time I go into the forest.
The locals call him Biondo. He is only half wolf. Scientists had captured him, tested him, then released him. Like I do. They say he is part dog. That it’s a catastrophe for the eco-system. The locals fear him more than a purebred. His canine genetics make him unafraid of people. He wants to be close, wants belly rubs and sticks to fetch and a fire to sleep in front of. But the wolf-half is stronger. He’ll get close, closer, closer, then revert to type, and kill.
This is so fun! What I found most engaging from this opening is actually not the content of what your narrator describes so much as the question of the narrator's identity, and the feeling that they may not actually be human (or at least they're isolated from the rest of human society). If you want to play with that idea a little further, there are some specific word choices you could play with ("female" instead of "women," "villagers" maybe instead of "locals," essentially language that would give the feeling of less familiarity with this society). But I love the intrigue of it, and the mood that these opening paragraphs set.
I love the imagery contrast between "there's a wolf on the loose, but I spend my days trying to catch mice." It plays on multiple layers - literally wolf and mice, but also
1) Focusing on small things vs. big things in life
2) Focusing on the things that are "distracting" vs. the dangerous.
Well done! I wish I had your voice and tone. It works well!
Thank you so much for your comments. This is exactly what I’m attempting. I’ve moved to the mountains and there really is a wolf, but I’m hoping this novel will play on the ideas of what we think is dangerous/what we fear/what is really dangerous in our lives… I’m very much a pantster, not a plotter, but that’s the vibe I’m going for so far!
I really love this! I’m compelled by both the voice and the story. I want to know who this person is and what kind of story is about to unfold. I would certainly keep reading to find out. The only edits that come to mind are small edits, to tighten the language more. When I was in grad school my last edit, out of necessity, was to reduce the length of my piece by 15% (to meet the word count). I never cut whole paragraphs, I just went sentence by sentence, snipping words. Occasionally I’d come to 2 or 3 sentences that could be lopped. And at the end of this process I always felt like my papers went from good to radiant--like how did I ever write that? So I’ve tried to keep up the discipline, of cutting my writing by 15% at the end. The edits that come up for me are in the spirit of that final 15% cut.
“There’s a wolf on the loose but I spend my days catching mice”
“It could be one in the same, cunning, coming back for the treats I leave out. But it doesn’t feel like one. It feels like an invasion.” (Although there is an argument to keep “I’m being invaded”--it’s more personally piercing language.)
Anyways just snipping words here and there to tighten the language as much as possible has a powerful effect in the end.
Thank you Amanda and other writers for your help. I am working in my clinic today so will drop in when I can to offer comments to others but if timing doesn't permit I promise to show up later!
I have a disaster happening over here🤣 I'm working on a series about how to create change in our life to gear up for the new year. This post talks about the two sides of us, our deepest, inner soulful self and the loud one (our unconscious mind) who takes over. I am using the word Loudypants for this because it gets the point across and is different, but perhaps it doesn't work? I shortened it to LP during the piece.
I am looking for help with the opening sentence but have included a little more for context:
It is our life’s work to move toward Wholeness. This can get tricky because it seems there are two parts of us – let’s call them Wholeness and Loudypants.
Loudypants changes their mind depending on the situation, is demanding and relentless. LP exhausts us.
Wholeness makes us feel great. This is the heart-centered part of us that never changes regardless of what’s happening. Because they are the soul of who we are they always lead us in the right direction once we learn to listen. Wholeness is based on quiet things like trust and surrender and is rarely something that has been modeled in our childhood. Wholeness yearns to grow because they know that’s how we feel fulfilled.
I like loudypants! It’s humorous and more descriptive than, I don’t know, “inner dialogue”? I would love a more detailed, descriptive intro to these opposing forces (“wholeness and loudypants”). How are they manifesting for you right now? What makes you want to write about them? Opening with a bit of personal narrative, or a lyrical description of the ache that gives rise to this piece, would increase my personal investment in what you have to say about wholeness and loudypants. Plus, grounding the piece in your own life from the start I think may be a helpful anchor in the development of the whole piece. I would dig deeply into what I mean by “loudypants” and find another phrase or two that can sub in throughout the piece, rather than subbing in “LP”--but that might just be a matter of preference. I think introducing the concepts with the most descriptive unique language, then having broader language to draw on can help bring more definition to the concepts, while also avoiding redundancy.
That said, I love what you are getting at here--the journey to the inner self that is wise and reliable. I think what you are describing as wholeness, I have called my indestructible inner landscape, and may be what’s referred to on this Substack as the cave of the heart. I haven’t assigned language to the other part of me, but loudypants feels really useful 😂
I wonder how this opening would feel if you began with the description of the people (and/or the gate at a connecting airport) and leaned into that visual imagery, and then broadened to say that no matter which city it's in, this part is always the same (rather than starting from the broad list and then narrowing in).
I also got a little mixed up by the grammar of the first sentence (I think "traveled in countless directions" is the phrase that feels a little off to me), but that may just be me. Or, honestly, this could also be a thing you could play with if you wanted to really evoke that sense of constant travel in many directions.
Thanks for chiming in, Kimia. I think the opening needs a little more structure and less of a list of different cities. I also have some ideas around how to lean more deeply into the beauty in the faces looking back at you (with the comedic nod to rhinoplasty). I'll tag you in the Ask an Editor essay next week. When are you publishing the guest post?
Okay here is my piece. I am trying to write an About page for my substack. It is feeling very heavy and I am looking for ways to make it a bit lighter. Here is what I have so far:
I’m Emmeline Tyler – a writer, linguist and mother living in Naarm (Melbourne) with my husband and child.
Everyone I know seems to be launching from crisis to crisis. Our mental health struggles reflect the litany of disasters broadcasted daily from our devices.
Community and connection is both the healing antidote to oppressive forces, and also our greatest defence against them.
We are all suffering under systems that weren’t built to facilitate flourishing; struggling just to get by. We are worrying about threats to our collective future but mostly too overwhelmed to know how to move forward in the face of them. Most of us, most of the time, get stuck when thinking about those big issues and try to push those scary thoughts and feelings down just so we can get our work done, keep the kids alive, and make it through the next week.
One thing I have learned about myself is that I am constitutionally incapable of pushing down the scary thoughts and feelings and getting on with my week (this probably has something to do with my being autistic). I am compulsively reading, observing, processing, and – unless I want to wind up very mentally unwell – letting it all out in the form of writing or other expression. Through this newsletter, I share my output with the hope that others can benefit.
Free subscribers will receive a weekly email newsletter article, usually on the topics of anti-capitalism, climate change, a combination of those topics, or something tangentially related. Also books (always books). Comments will be open to facilitate a sense of community.
I hope you are inspired to join me here.
Hi Emmeline! Thank you for joining us today! It sounds like you're trying to accomplish a lot here in your About Page, and I think your instinct to make it lighter is tapping into something important. I'm actually working on a piece around editorial branding on Substack right now, and here's some of the guidance I'm culling together for About pages. (I hope it's OK to use this as a sneak peek opportunity. I do think it'll be helpful!)
This is where your personality and vision for your writing should be allowed to shine. I have some preferred structures that I use with clients that I think work particularly well, but I always like to see About pages that speak directly to the reader and describe the reader back to themselves. It’s a bit like diagnostic writing—if you’re here, you likely experience X. About pages should utilize subheadings to break information up (scrolling for easy reading is important here). Here's a structure to consider for About pages:
1. Who the reader is.
2. What the writing will bring them.
3. Who they'll be hearing from.
4. How to join in and never miss an update
Thank you!!
I don’t have a next piece in progress yet, but I’d love to share the opening paragraphs of my latest Substack post. I think it has a lot of the strengths and weaknesses characteristic of my writing, and i may apply further edits, even though it’s already posted. My current subscriber list is less than 20, so I hope my writing will have more exposure in the future than it has right now, which could warrant further edits.
Caretaking
A Story of Pathological Demand Avoidance
At the core of my social existence is a contradiction: social thirst coupled with social recoiling. It is a contradiction that makes enemies out of loved ones, that weaves hostility into ordinary interactions. There is, in fact, no social bond that does not feel like an enemy’s lair, where I often slip wordlessly into shadows, feeling nothing in my body but the terror of being seen. Even as a mother, I am stalked prey.
I always wondered how my body became the site of enemy formation at the age of three. I woke up every morning ready to fight the first demand that descended on me. I bit my siblings, screamed in rage, and dared my mother to draw up a boundary so that, looking her in the eye, I could transgress it. Not a single “no” slipped past my body unfought. There were daily tantrums, daily spankings, until my mother’s god stopped her in her tracks and whispered, “your daughter is not your enemy.”
My mom was raising five neurodivergent children without resources or diagnoses. As a cycle breaker, she was learning to parent from scratch. Her evangelical environment offered authoritarian parenting techniques; but when she met the ferocity of my resistance, she began to pioneer a path toward neuro-affirming parenting. She didn’t call it neuro-affirming parenting—that language didn’t exist then. She called it listening to God—which is probably why god became the first psychological space in which I learned to practice self-compassion.
My mother’s god listened to the bodies of her children.
Yet I still resisted her hugs, and whispered back at her loving affirmations, “don’t love me.”
I love this piece!
“She pioneered a path toward what is now called neuro-affirming parenting”.
I absolutely love the last sentence. Experiencing ‘I love you’ as a demand is so powerful. It really ties in with the first paragraph and the whole piece. But it feels underutilised somehow. Very powerful concept but the writing doesn’t quite carry it. I feel bad giving this feedback because I can’t think of how to improve it. I’m putting it here anyway because I’m hoping someone else (or you!) can use this feedback as a jumping off point.
Thanks Emmeline! That actually is really helpful. In these first few paragraphs I was trying to paint a picture with very little material--my own memories before age five are almost nonexistent (at least in narrative form. Parenting has been thick with emotional flashbacks), so I’m working mostly with anecdotes my mom told over the years. I actually hadn’t made the connection that I was experiencing “I love you” as a demand, which may be why that connection doesn’t come through. It’s a detail my mom has often talked about, which I’ve associated with a deep sense of alienation--but I hadn’t identified the specific PDA mechanism you’re observing. I think I may be able to make that connection more coherent. Thanks again!
By the way I find PDA so fascinating and I love that you are writing about it. People learn so much from reading others’ lived experiences
Amazing!!
At the core of my social existence is a contradiction: thirst coupled with recoiling. It makes enemies out of loved ones and weaves hostility into ordinary interactions. There is no social bond that does not feel like an enemy’s lair. I often slip wordlessly into shadows, feeling nothing but the terror of being seen. Even as a mother, I am stalked prey.
I cut some words for you!
Reading it, I thought of a bunch of publications you should subscribe to. I'm glad I checked your profile first, because you already subscribe to them all! We know who we are.
Thank you! I didn’t apply my 15% cut to this piece, because the 1-2 hours it takes just didn’t open up, but what a difference it makes! (BTW I checked and you cut the word count by almost exactly 15%). It’s funny, because I really labored over this paragraph, kept coming back to it, trying to make it less clunky, trying to use the word “social” less than 5 times (I got it down to 4; you trimmed it to 2). But a really helpful shift takes place when I switch gears from trying to make my piece *better* to trying to make it *shorter*. I become less of an attached writer and more of a pragmatic reader. I’m turning your feedback into a pitch for my favorite editing rule, but it really does work. If you can’t afford an editor and haven’t found a writer’s group, it may be the next best thing?
(For anyone reading I described 15% cut rule above: When I was in grad school my last edit, out of necessity, was to reduce the length of my piece by 15% (to meet the word count). I never cut whole paragraphs, I just went sentence by sentence, snipping words. Occasionally I’d come to 2 or 3 sentences that could be lopped. And at the end of this process I always felt like my papers went from good to radiant--like how did I ever write that? So I’ve tried to keep up the discipline, of cutting my writing by 15% at the end.
It's always harder to do it to our own!
Amanda, you are a wonderful, generous human. I appreciate you!
This is way out of my comfort zone, but Kimia dared me. Well, not exactly, but if she can do it...
Anyway, here's a random paragraph (not the worst, are you kidding me?) from a work in progress on "back to the office" for your editing pleasure.
"Before COVID, downtown office culture companies were offering everything from free breakfasts to rest pods to encourage people to spend all their waking hours in the office. Home for many was a studio apartment in a five over one - named for a style of residential construction with five floors of wood over one floor of concrete. With a high density per square mile, no or limited parking, no public space, and limited room for entertainment, tenants were a captive audience for the gyms, bars, and restaurants in the ground floors. With COVID and the shuttering of offices and places of entertainment, the shallow roots of that lifestyle became clear. Many who were made to work from home took the opportunity to move out of the city to more fully diverse communities where they could build a richer social life and put down some real roots. In the drive to save the downtown economy, it's worth asking: whose economy are we trying to save?"
Hi John! Thanks for sharing this! It's a little tough to jump into the middle of a piece without broader context, but I think there are some ways to shift to using the active voice and a little tighter writing:
Before COVID, the carrots dangled in the faces of employees were plentiful: free breakfasts? Rest pods? Downtown office culture was focused on one thing: encouraging people to spend all their waking hours in the office.
Home for many was a studio apartment in a "five over one" — a style of construction with five floors of wood over one floor of concrete. The thinking behind this residential style was intentional, if not claustrophobic: with a high density per square mile, no or limited parking, no public space, and limited room for entertainment, tenants were a captive audience for the gyms, bars, and restaurants in the ground floors.
When COVID shuttered offices and places of entertainment, the shallow roots of this lifestyle became clear. Many who worked from home left the city and moved into more fully diverse communities where they could build a richer social life and put down some real roots. In the drive to save the downtown economy, it's worth asking: whose economy are we trying to save?"
Thanks, Amanda. My bad for not following your directions and telling you the kind of help I was looking for, but you got it.
I had the same feeling about active voice. It reads passive, but on checking, the verbs were active! I'm thinking it's maybe because of the lack of agency. I've written these sentences with inanimate objects as the grammatical subjects. How about I try to turn those around to put the people back in charge of the sentences?
No worries at all! We writers like to get our undies in a knot about active voice, when I do think sometimes objects can be active and lively as well. In this case, you probably have some great imagery just waiting to jump in. The misery of the "five over one" lifestyle almost begs for some stomach-curling, robot imagery! You got this one, John...
Thanks Amanda. Passive voice was used so much when the lab was where I worked - the beaker was placed on the bunsen burner - that the habit is hard to break. Is what I did there visible to you?
This paragraph read passive, even if it wasn't! You've helped a lot. Thank you!
So excited for this:
Context: Full WIP - https://bit.ly/3ugf58j
Feedback Requested: I am so unhappy with how I conclude this piece. It seems to just "drop off a cliff" vs. come to a close. I am not sure how to fix it.
Paragraph Closing:
Often, we are instructed by society only to show anger and toughness when we are working with others, particularly in sports. Anytime any other emotion boils to the surface, we are told, “don’t be a sissy,” “No one likes a crybaby,” or “Tough it out” *(pejorative phrases in which the discussion is not on topic).* So whenever I felt these emotions, it eventually felt “wrong” to hold or express them. So I hid them. Do that enough and eventually, you will be convincing yourself that they don’t exist.
Wrong.
They manifest in other ways. Bad decisions. Mistreatment of others. Being “aggressive” in a meeting, etc. They will grow - you just won’t see them until it's too late and they are wreaking havoc on your life.
However, when I started to doubt my internal dialogue, I was forced to seek to understand it. When I worked to understand it, I became compassionate towards myself and others. Who can entirely condemn another’s thinking when they’re not entirely certain they’re right?
This uncertainty gave me the courage to “saddle up” and face things that I ignored. After all, it’s the questions that we strive to answer that often teach us the most.
Thanks so much for chiming in, Jake! Ending essays can be such a huge hurdle to get across. I think sometimes we need permission to not wrap things up tidily ... and then maybe offer a list of reader questions to launch a conversation instead.
In your writing sample, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a way to insert your own experiences with restricting anger and toughness to a sports-only setting. In what setting did you hear "No one likes a crybaby?" Can you describe that setting; how you felt; if it caught you off guard? Did it morph into an internalized message you carried for a long time?
These are just a few thoughts. So glad to have you here!
Good call out! The whole essay is actually my internalization. For example, here is the opening of the piece. Should I still include some thoughts about internalized in this context?
“Why are you such a dumbass? What’s wrong with you?”
“A lot. I’m pretty much a f**kup.”
“Oh, you finally realize it? About damn time!”
“I don’t feel like I can do it all the time. It’s a lot to be out there.”
“Ahh, so you’re a lazy f**kup. That’s even worse. It’s not that hard.”*
“It was hard at the time. I couldn’t get it going for myself.”
“Ok, well, glad to know you’re a softhearted baby who can’t do anything. It’s not that complicated.”
”I know, I know. I am trying to get better.”
“You have been trying forever. You need to DO, not try.”
“Ya, you’re right.”*
A year ago, I realized I was in an abusive relationship…
…with myself.
Hey Jack! I really appreciate you joining in so enthusiastically today. I'd like to send through a 30-day paid comp to The Editing Spectrum. What is your email address? (This will add you to my list!)
I meant Jake. :) :)
Thanks for this extra info! I think the long list of questions makes it somewhat challenging to create an engaging flow for readers. I think the piece could benefit from describing a point in time where one of these accusations showed up -- the person, the setting, the impact. And then decide which phrase comes next, sort of like, “Then there was Coach Melville in middle school..” And perhaps shift into, “one day all the voices started to sound the same ... “
One thing jumped out for me. The word wrong is in a one word paragraph for emphasis. It also appears in quotes in the previous paragraph. Maybe change the first instance to something like inappropriate.
Nice catch! Super helpful!
This is a great idea! I admire your creativity with substack and am in awe for how you write and edit and get it all done! 👏🏼🙌🏼
Hi all (and thanks for do this!). Here's the opening to my latest MS. Open to any and all feedback and would love brutal honesty :)
There’s a wolf on the loose, but I spend my days trying to catch mice. Some locals cook a chicken, arrosto, in an effort to placate him.
Him, her, I assume male. Women don’t roam the world alone, stalking, hunting, killing. Whole villages don’t fall prey to hysteria because they fear females.
I’ve caught three mice this week. Capture. Release. Capture. Release. It could be the same one, cunning, coming back to snack on the treats I leave out to lure them. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’m being invaded. My home, infested with rodents, a tide of vermin moving under floorboards, while the eyes of the wolf watch me every time I go into the forest.
The locals call him Biondo. He is only half wolf. Scientists had captured him, tested him, then released him. Like I do. They say he is part dog. That it’s a catastrophe for the eco-system. The locals fear him more than a purebred. His canine genetics make him unafraid of people. He wants to be close, wants belly rubs and sticks to fetch and a fire to sleep in front of. But the wolf-half is stronger. He’ll get close, closer, closer, then revert to type, and kill.
This is so fun! What I found most engaging from this opening is actually not the content of what your narrator describes so much as the question of the narrator's identity, and the feeling that they may not actually be human (or at least they're isolated from the rest of human society). If you want to play with that idea a little further, there are some specific word choices you could play with ("female" instead of "women," "villagers" maybe instead of "locals," essentially language that would give the feeling of less familiarity with this society). But I love the intrigue of it, and the mood that these opening paragraphs set.
I love the imagery contrast between "there's a wolf on the loose, but I spend my days trying to catch mice." It plays on multiple layers - literally wolf and mice, but also
1) Focusing on small things vs. big things in life
2) Focusing on the things that are "distracting" vs. the dangerous.
Well done! I wish I had your voice and tone. It works well!
Thank you so much for your comments. This is exactly what I’m attempting. I’ve moved to the mountains and there really is a wolf, but I’m hoping this novel will play on the ideas of what we think is dangerous/what we fear/what is really dangerous in our lives… I’m very much a pantster, not a plotter, but that’s the vibe I’m going for so far!
I really love this! I’m compelled by both the voice and the story. I want to know who this person is and what kind of story is about to unfold. I would certainly keep reading to find out. The only edits that come to mind are small edits, to tighten the language more. When I was in grad school my last edit, out of necessity, was to reduce the length of my piece by 15% (to meet the word count). I never cut whole paragraphs, I just went sentence by sentence, snipping words. Occasionally I’d come to 2 or 3 sentences that could be lopped. And at the end of this process I always felt like my papers went from good to radiant--like how did I ever write that? So I’ve tried to keep up the discipline, of cutting my writing by 15% at the end. The edits that come up for me are in the spirit of that final 15% cut.
“There’s a wolf on the loose but I spend my days catching mice”
“It could be one in the same, cunning, coming back for the treats I leave out. But it doesn’t feel like one. It feels like an invasion.” (Although there is an argument to keep “I’m being invaded”--it’s more personally piercing language.)
Anyways just snipping words here and there to tighten the language as much as possible has a powerful effect in the end.
Love the way your edit uses parallel construction in "it doesn't feel... it feels..." Punchier!
This is so great! I love the 15% guideline for trimming a piece down!
Thank you Amanda and other writers for your help. I am working in my clinic today so will drop in when I can to offer comments to others but if timing doesn't permit I promise to show up later!
I have a disaster happening over here🤣 I'm working on a series about how to create change in our life to gear up for the new year. This post talks about the two sides of us, our deepest, inner soulful self and the loud one (our unconscious mind) who takes over. I am using the word Loudypants for this because it gets the point across and is different, but perhaps it doesn't work? I shortened it to LP during the piece.
I am looking for help with the opening sentence but have included a little more for context:
It is our life’s work to move toward Wholeness. This can get tricky because it seems there are two parts of us – let’s call them Wholeness and Loudypants.
Loudypants changes their mind depending on the situation, is demanding and relentless. LP exhausts us.
Wholeness makes us feel great. This is the heart-centered part of us that never changes regardless of what’s happening. Because they are the soul of who we are they always lead us in the right direction once we learn to listen. Wholeness is based on quiet things like trust and surrender and is rarely something that has been modeled in our childhood. Wholeness yearns to grow because they know that’s how we feel fulfilled.
I like loudypants! It’s humorous and more descriptive than, I don’t know, “inner dialogue”? I would love a more detailed, descriptive intro to these opposing forces (“wholeness and loudypants”). How are they manifesting for you right now? What makes you want to write about them? Opening with a bit of personal narrative, or a lyrical description of the ache that gives rise to this piece, would increase my personal investment in what you have to say about wholeness and loudypants. Plus, grounding the piece in your own life from the start I think may be a helpful anchor in the development of the whole piece. I would dig deeply into what I mean by “loudypants” and find another phrase or two that can sub in throughout the piece, rather than subbing in “LP”--but that might just be a matter of preference. I think introducing the concepts with the most descriptive unique language, then having broader language to draw on can help bring more definition to the concepts, while also avoiding redundancy.
That said, I love what you are getting at here--the journey to the inner self that is wise and reliable. I think what you are describing as wholeness, I have called my indestructible inner landscape, and may be what’s referred to on this Substack as the cave of the heart. I haven’t assigned language to the other part of me, but loudypants feels really useful 😂
^ What Shaina said. ;)
I wonder how this opening would feel if you began with the description of the people (and/or the gate at a connecting airport) and leaned into that visual imagery, and then broadened to say that no matter which city it's in, this part is always the same (rather than starting from the broad list and then narrowing in).
I also got a little mixed up by the grammar of the first sentence (I think "traveled in countless directions" is the phrase that feels a little off to me), but that may just be me. Or, honestly, this could also be a thing you could play with if you wanted to really evoke that sense of constant travel in many directions.
Excited to see where it goes!
Looking forward to reading this, Kimia!
How about starting with "I always melt at the departure gate, ..."? It's such a strong sentence. It sets the tone and draws me in.
Thanks for chiming in, Kimia. I think the opening needs a little more structure and less of a list of different cities. I also have some ideas around how to lean more deeply into the beauty in the faces looking back at you (with the comedic nod to rhinoplasty). I'll tag you in the Ask an Editor essay next week. When are you publishing the guest post?
I'll aim for this going out first thing Tuesday morning ... I don't want to overshadow Ramona's Cave of the Heart on Monday. <3