Shadow Compliment [Draft & Redraft #10]
Weekly Guided Writing Sessions and Gentle Moves Toward Lit Mag Love
This is the tenth session in this weekly series of short guided practices for writers, and I’m glad you’re here.
Each week, you’ll return to (or create) a small piece of writing, then make one tiny, specific revision move so your work keeps developing over time.
You don’t need to have done previous sessions to join. All you need is your notebook or keyboard and a willingness to let the “polite” sentiment find its undercurrent.
Today’s Focus: Shadow compliment (praise with an undercurrent)
A shadow compliment is praise with an undercurrent: the warm sentence you can say out loud, paired with the truer sentence you tend to swallow.
You might already have intuited that this lesson embraces the view that your writing does not have to be “nice,” and you don’t have to perform an ideal self on the page. It’s true, the undercurrent might be tenderness, grief, or rage you’ve been masking. Today, you’ll let these layers be present in your writing.
Access to the full audio and exercises is available exclusively to paid subscribers. If you are not a paid subscriber, unlock this session to try it out.
Listen to the guided audio below:
