Words You Need To Redefine

You cannot write if you live your life by someone else’s definition of a word. When your words are not your own, you can’t tell your own story.

It’s time to redefine these five words and change the way you see your work.

Aggressive
This is when you’re pushy. You say what you’re not supposed to say. You cross lines, breach borders and are altogether strident. In most cases, it likely means someone thinks you’ve done something wrong. I believe we need to speak our truths. We need to share our opinions. We need to push beyond the boundaries already set if we want to find new ideas. Be aggressive, I say.

Bitch
My dog Pipa is the quintessential bitch. I learned what the word means from her. When our other dog, Mani, a great big golden Labrador tries to take her place on the mat, she pulls up her lips baring red black gums with a great menacing growl. Mani slinks away. There was room for him, she just said no.

She can be lovely too when she wants to, she just doesn’t want to.

She holds her space. Her place. She knows what she wants and she gets it. I admire her for it. I think we can all learn from her.

Should
“You really should write [fill in the blank] book.”

“You really should teach.”
You really should go back to school, get a job, cut your hair….” blah blah blah.

I cringe when I hear the word should. Should is the sound of impending compulsion. It’s what someone else thinks is best for you but rarely takes what you want into account.

Even when people are well-meaning, even if they truly have your best interests at heart, should is a misguided statement of caring because it centers someone else’s needs and not your own.

You make your choices for yourself, regardless of what others think or want for you.

You might be wrong, but no one succeeds every time and failure is part of learning. Besides, you might very well know what’s best for yourself.

Selfish
Selfish simply means you put yourself first. Selfish often means you’ve told someone no and that person doesn’t like it. They want you to put them first.

The people in your life who have your back, might initially be angry when you set this boundary, but they’ll eventually understand. Those who don’t? Well, their happiness is not your responsibility. If a family member or friend can’t understand that you have to take care of yourself first, then they don’t deserve to be put first in your life.

Go ahead and be selfish. Sleep an extra hour if you need it. Take a shower instead of rushing to help. Say no when you need to safeguard your time and your energy. And when someone in your life tries to tell you you’re being selfish, you can say, “yes, yes I am.”

Perfect
There is no such thing as perfect. You will never obtain it no matter how hard you try. You can spend a lifetime trying to achieve perfection and you will have wasted your life, because perfection is a specter, an imaginary creature designed to keep you chasing, rushing, running in circles and never reaching your destination.

Instead of perfect, let’s talk about finished. You finished a story. You sent out a pitch to an editor. You applied for a grant or job or residency that makes your soul sing. These are the kinds of work that lead you toward your ideal writing life.

Perfection simply distracts you.

There are many other words I’d like to redefine in our cultural lexicon, too. Shame. Busy. Failure. Let’s shake them up, change them into something new. Instead of words telling us who we should be, we can change them to be self-supporting and open us endlessly to the act of creation.

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Leigh Shulman is a writing mentor with twenty years teaching experience under her belt, teaching at universities and writing programs worldwide. She currently teaches at The Workshop, her online writing community. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, New York Times, and Vox among others, and her book The Writer’s Roadmap: Paving the Way To Your Ideal Writing Life has helped hundreds of writers find their way in the writing world.

She currently lives in Argentina with her family where she writes and wonders if she’s the only person on earth who doesn’t like dulce de leche.

About The Writer’s Roadmap: Paving the Way to Your Ideal Writing Life

Have you always dreamed of making a living from writing? Or even just a way to fit writing into your everyday life? But fear and doubt get in the way…

“What if I’m not good enough? What if nobody wants to read what I have to say? Where do I even start?” Your writing dream can seem impossibly hard to reach.

Writing teacher and author, Leigh Shulman, has helped hundreds of students overcome these blocks. Now in The Writer’s Roadmap she shares her twenty years experience of helping others to write and publish their way to their ideal writing lives.

In this essential writing guide, Leigh takes you through a combination of practical steps and mindset work to show you that achieving your writing aspirations is not only possible but joyful (and profitable.) Over the course of a weekend you can work through her hands-on writing exercises, real-life case studies from her students and stories from her own personal writing journey. The Writer’s Roadmap not only shows you how to decide what you want in your writing life but how to get there, too.

If you want to avoid the number one reason why most people never write, learn how to deal with rejection and believe you can earn money from your writing, then The Writer’s Roadmap will signpost the way to take that big scary writing dream and break it down into manageable steps.

Writing is a journey, but you’ll never reach your destination if you don’t take that first step. If you’re ready to stop dreaming and start writing then adventure awaits…

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers