When I write, I feel like an optometrist, constantly flipping between lenses and asking, 'Is this better? Is this?' Slowly, the work comes into focus.
Interpretation
Writing is a process of refinement that requires careful adjustment and evaluation.
In this quote, Nell Scovell compares the act of writing to the work of an optometrist, suggesting that writers, like eye care professionals, must continually adjust and refine their work to find clarity and focus. The metaphor highlights the iterative process of writing, where constant testing and reassessment lead to the final polished piece, emphasizing patience and precision in creative endeavors.
In practice
In a writers' workshop to encourage a friend who is struggling with their draft.
I think, in all fields, there's this motherhood pay penalty where, the second you become a mother - and this is true whether you give birth or adopt - you're perceived to not be as committed to your job. Whereas men are perceived as breadwinners who now need more money and promotions because they're fathers.
If women who don't help women get a special circle in hell, I think women who do help women should get a special cloud in heaven.
Imagination is the primary gift of human consciousness.
Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on sorrow. When you delight in existence, you will awaken, and become a guide to those in need, revealing the path to many.
Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.
Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.
He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
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