Klinkenborg makes this argument in his novel Several Short Sentences About Writing. He implores his readers to write short sentences, claiming that the school model of writing has led us astray with long winding sentences that make no cohesive sense:

You’d like to think your education has carried you well past short sentences. But you’ve been delivered into a wilderness of false assumptions and bad habits, a desert of jargon and weak constructions, a land of linguistic barbarism, a place where it’s nearly impossible to write with clarity or directness, without clichés or meaningless phrases. (Klinkenborg 5)

Klinkenborg, a current professor at Yale University, has years upon years of teaching experience under his belt (Yale University). Yet, as Maria Popova from Brain Pickings points out in her critique of Klinkenborg’s novel, “[he] does away with much of the traditional wisdom on writing” (Popova). After countless hours spent reading papers written by struggling college students and writing papers of his own as a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, Klinkenborg began his process of “unlearning what [he] learned in college – teaching [himself] to write well” (Klinkenborg Prologue).

As more concrete rules are thrust upon us, we tend to forget our foundation. What we initially learned about writing. As children, we learned to listen and read. We formulated our own sentences from examples of good writing and were encouraged to express our own thoughts in our own words. Yet, gradually these lessons are forgotten or ignored. New, more concrete rules come into play – the music of writing loses priority to sounding authoritative and informed. We begin putting on a mask when we write, borrowing ideas from others and fearing to include even a fraction of what we truly believe. Our sentences begin to sound choppy, full of meaningless words and repetitive phrases, because we forget that “only a string of choppy sentences sounds choppy” (Klinkenborg 10). To combat this, we write sentences that seem like “a long, weary road to the wrong place” (Klinkenborg 10), forgetting its initial purpose. In short, we forget how to truly write.

The school model of writing, he implies, chokes our ability to write well. In high school, students are penalized for starting sentences with ‘and’, not using transition words, or failing to flag paragraphs with topic sentences. In response, students take the skeletons of essays past, fill them with clichés, and hide behind the thoughts of others. They sacrifice sentences of their own to the altar of education, where teachers schooled in the rigidness of writing serve as quality control; they hold their papers to the scrutiny of a check-list. But can good writing really be qualified in such a manner?

Many educators would say ‘yes’. That is, after all, what a rubric is meant for. High schools across the globe utilize a check-list as a tool to grade papers and guide their students to writing quality essays. They would argue against Klinkenborg, stating that the rules surrounding how to write is for the purpose of clarity; there are good reasons for the rules in place. They were not created in hopes of stifling creativity. Rather, they were created to focus our sentences to convey exactly what we want them to.

But this brings up another issue with education and its influence on the world’s writers: writing for the purpose of conveying meaning. “You’ve been taught […] that writing is the business of depositing meaning to be extracted later, that a sentence is the transcription of a thought, the husk of an idea, valuable only for what it transmits or contains, not for what it is” (Klinkenborg 18). In our current education system, we are told to write aiming towards an end goal. Each sentence should be written to convey an idea, and not much else. In other words, any sentence written in a typical paper should be able to be rewritten and still have the same reception amongst professors. But we must remember that “no two sentences are the same unless they’re exactly the same, word for word” (Klinkenborg 19). How can two sentences convey the exact same message – insight the same string of thoughts and images through another’s mind? The short answer is, they can’t.

What, then, about structure? Surely a clear structure to an essay aids in making a paper clearer for the reader! Educators may argue that the PEEL (Point, Evidence, Explanation, Link) structure allows students to easily hold their reader’s hand through their argument, making their paper easier to understand. The PEEL structure ensures that students flag their paragraphs with their main ideas, provide adequate amounts of evidence to support their claim, thoroughly explain how their evidence is relevant, and swiftly link their paragraph to the following idea. With this kind of structure, it would be impossible for students to miss out on crucial points on their papers – it serves as the perfect safety net. For students that struggle with writing, the PEEL structure offers safety – a means to do just as well grade-wise without having to take the time to actually learn how to write well.

This is exactly what is wrong with this kind of writing. “In journalism, the equivalent of the topic sentence is the notorious ‘nut graf,’ a paragraph that tells you the content of the article you’re about to read, as if you couldn’t proceed without a précis” (Klinkenborg 26). As for transitions, it ignores “a basic truth about writing, a magical truth. You can get anywhere from anywhere, always and almost instantly” (Klinkenborg 26). Not only does the PEEL structure feel repetitive and boring, but it also leaves nothing to be imagined; it underestimates its readers. How can our education system expect students to write profoundly about their own thoughts when it so violently snuffs out what makes one’s writing interesting?

However, rules aren’t all bad. One must learn, for example, grammatical rules. Without them, one’s writing is doomed to be quite terrible. One must also learn how to listen for the music of their words – how one sentence flows into the next, how each paragraph sounds next to another. But many of the rules taught in our education system are too rigid, serving to beat the creativity out of us instead of helping us become better writers. These are the rules that must be unlearned for one to begin again in understanding how to write well.

Works Cited

Klinkenborg, Verlyn. Several Short Sentences about Writing. Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., 2012.

Yale University. “Verlyn Klinkenborg.” Verlyn Klinkenborg | English, 2018, english.yale.edu/people/full-part-time-lecturers/verlyn-klinkenborg.

Popova, Maria. “Several Short Sentences About Writing.” Brain Pickings, 18 Sept. 2015, www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/09/several-short-sentences-about-writing-klinkenborg/.

It is said that our memories are what make us who we are. The memories swimming through our minds create a personalized schema within each of us, influencing our thoughts, actions, goals, and values. In everyday practice, memory is no doubt important. But, to answer whether memory is the key to everything, we must first determine what “everything” is.

It is difficult to imagine “everything”. And to determine whether something is the key to “everything”, we would need to be able to comprehend all that exists in the world – both tangible and not. This is a daunting task for any mortal. Instead, it makes sense to narrow the scope of “everything” to the context of poetry, considering that is the scenario the quote was said in. How could memory be the key to everything about poetry?

This is a much simpler question to tackle.

It is a common notion that poetry was born. That at some point, there was a first poet, who invented the mode of writing that became what is today known as poetry. This is a notion that poetry was created by man, and did not exist before that. With this interpretation of poetry, memory is integral. It is difficult – nearly impossible – to write about something that is not tied to something we have already seen before. Each new creation, whether realistic or surreal, is anchored to some memory.

However, there is an opposing notion – that poetry is discovered. This is the belief that poetry is a part of the nature of the world, waiting to be noticed by an unsuspecting poet. And with this interpretation, just as with poetry that is invented, memory is integral. A poet must reach into the crevices of their mind to recall things of the past, uncovering the poetry of the mundane in the process.

Regardless of one’s view of poetry, memory is key. Being able to recall information from one’s past and nurture it into a piece of art is at the heart of what makes poetry, poetry. Without memory, poetry would be lost to us.

Memory can be defined as “the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information” or “something remembered from the past” (”Memory.”). Naturally, the retrieval of memory yields a sense of nostalgia, “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past” (”Nostalgia.”). Moss’ piece of advice brings with it the notion that nostalgia is a feeling one must steer away from – something bad we must avoid. And while that is a concept that is easy to imagine, nostalgia often brings positive emotions, albeit some longing for a time one cannot return to. This reveals the possibility of at least two types of nostalgia – the unhealthy and the healthy.

It is easy to imagine a nostalgia that is unhealthy – harking for a time that is long gone. It can hinder the growth of a person, keep them anchored to a memory that they can never truly return to in the way that they wish. This nostalgia taints our memories. We project our current emotions onto our past and can no longer see them for what they truly are. It causes people to be unable to see their memories with any sense of reality. The inability to move on with life and create new memories is what makes this version of nostalgia unhealthy. This is the kind of nostalgia that has no connection to the present; the kind of nostalgia that Moss believed needed to be outgrown.

But nostalgia can be healthy, too. If what makes nostalgia unhealthy is the inability to move on from the past, then nostalgia that allows a person to better understand the present and look forward to the future is its antithesis. “The end is where we start from” (Eliot), allowing us to pick up from the end of a memory, and use our gained insight through retrospect to better understand the situation we were in; thus, we begin again – wiser. As T.S. Eliot writes, “The end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time” (Eliot). This kind of nostalgia is one we should strive to have, especially when writing poetry.

As noted, there are two ideas of the nature of poetry – that it is born, and that it is discovered. It was also fleshed out that memory is integral to both of these notions of poetry. Thus, it follows that nostalgia is naturally linked to the production or discovery of poetry. A poet could, if stuck in an unhealthy kind of nostalgia, continuously write about the same long-gone memory; they would be blinded to the other viewpoints that would enlighten them to the true nature of their past situation. This is the kind of nostalgia that a poet, in particular, must outgrow. However, a poet also could look back at a time in their past with longing and come to a revelation that things were not as bad as they initially seemed. A poet could write poems from different times in their life, including their revelations about the past with each poem. They could imaginably write poems that connect their revelations of the past to the conceivable events of their future.

It is through this understanding that we can see how there are always two sides to the same coin. While nostalgia can be useful, poets especially must be careful not to fall into unhealthy nostalgia’s trap – not only will their poetry suffer, but their rumination of the past will make it difficult for them to understand their memories. Nostalgia does not always need to be outgrown, as Moss advises, but that does not mean people should not be wary of its ability to trap people in the past.

Works Cited

Eliot, T. S. “Little Gidding.” Four Quartets. Harcourt, 1943.

“Memory.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Moss, Howard. Minor Monuments: Selected Essays. Ecco Press, Michigan, USA, 1986.

“Nostalgia.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2018.

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To begin, we must first ask the question: what makes it so difficult to accommodate Beauty and Truth? What makes them so fundamentally different? One could say that they tend in completely different directions. After all, as the saying goes, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”; it is subjective. What one might consider disgusting, another may see as an artistic masterpiece. Beauty can also be said to obscure one’s eyes to the ugly or unpleasant, but this too is entirely dependent on what one considers to be ugly or unpleasant. Truth seems to go in the totally opposite direction – it is seemingly objective. There is a notion that something catering to Truth can only ever be expressed in one correct manner. And seemingly opposite to Beauty, Truth is often described as “ugly”. With these definitions of Beauty and Truth, it is easy to see why so many have such a difficult time putting them together.

This is particularly seen with poetry. As one may imagine, writing with each in mind yields very different kinds of works. A poem written with Beauty in mind may exaggerate the mundane, making them more exciting or dramatic. It may also alter some of the unpleasant aspects of its topic or omit what is ugly altogether in order to preserve the beauty of the work. A poem written with Truth in mind, on the other hand, would aim to stick to factual details, saying as much as possible without flowering its words. Even the most ugly or unpleasant detail would be included. These two abstracts seem to contradict each other in every possible way.

How, then, are we supposed to parse John Keats’ sentiment that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats 116)? If Beauty and Truth are so opposite, how could one possibly attempt to equate them? Interestingly, this is not an unpopular concept among writers. Emily Dickinson has written poems that suggest that Beauty and Truth are at least related, if not the same thing, as well as other poems that suggest that the truth can be told with beauty in mind.

Most explicitly, in Dickinson’s poem “I died for Beauty - but was scarce”, Beauty and Truth are brethren – two parts of the Platonic Triad (Vendler 216). The relationship between Beauty and Truth is strengthened throughout her poem, through words and phrases that imply a connection, such as “Kinsmen” (qtd. in Vendler 216 line 9) and “Themself are One” (qtd. in Vendler 216 line 7). She describes the two personified beings as having been buried in adjoining rooms, conjuring a mental image of Beauty and Truth being individuals, while somehow still being connected through an opening between their tombs. In this way, Dickinson does not deny that Beauty and Truth are fundamentally distinct – there is a wall that separates the two personified beings that doesn’t disappear – but resolves the issue by instead claiming that Beauty and Truth are complementary (Vendler 217).

She expands on this notion in her poem “Tell all the truth but tell it slant -”. Immediately, the reader is faced with a dilemma: how could one possibly tell “all the truth” (qtd. in Vendler 431) in an indirect manner? Wouldn’t that contradict the fundamental nature of Truth? Dickinson attempts to resolve this paradox throughout the poem. She elaborates, stating that “Success in Circuit lies” (qtd. in Vendler 431 line 2), implying that one can only be successful by telling all the truth in a roundabout manner. But one must then ask, success in what?

It is possible that Dickinson is referring to telling all the truth in a manner in which others can understand it. In this way, telling all the truth indirectly does not take away from the fact that one is still telling all the truth. In order to make it easier to handle all the truth, symbolized through light imagery, one must not blind their audience with the direct truth; rather, they should tell it indirectly, or “slant” (qtd. in Vendler 431 line 1). She concludes that “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind -” (qtd. in Vendler 431 line 7-8). In this way, the Truth must be told in a beautiful manner – aesthetic and dazzling – in order for others to truly grasp it.

It is also possible that Dickinson is in fact referring to the nature of poetry. It is this interpretation that leads to our best understanding of what poetry is and how to reconcile Beauty and Truth. Her initial plea for her audience to tell “all” the truth may be in reference to the tendency for poets to tell only the part of the truth that is acceptable to their audience (Vendler 431). Success, in this sense, would refer to the success of one’s poetry getting through to their audience while preserving the initial truth of their work. Instead of telling half-truths in their work, Dickinson encourages poets to tell their truths in a roundabout manner to ease their audience into understanding their message. Through this interpretation, Dickinson’s poem serves as a blueprint for how to write good poetry.

Dickinson thus reveals her own definition of poetry: it is all the truth told in an indirect and beautiful manner for the benefit of others. And it is through this understanding that we can begin to comprehend how poetry could possibly be both “the best words in the best order” (Coleridge 48) and “that part of the truth of the world that has its origin in the feelings” (Stevens 904).

Works Cited

Coleridge, Samuel T. Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Harper & Brothers, London, 1836.

Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Keats - Poems Published in 1820. Edited by M. Robertson. Clarendon Press, 1909.

Stevens, Wallace. Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose. Vintage Books, New York, USA, 1989.

Vendler, Helen. Dickinson - Selected Poems and Commentaries. Harvard University Press, United States of America, 2010.

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Two weeks ago, the Hero’s Journey™ was the only archetypal story I knew of. I figured “hero” was being used in the same way “man” is used in “mankind”—indicating a gender neutral protagonist going on an adventure. And then I came across a YouTube video about the Heroine’s Journey.

Initially I was skeptical1.

Why would we need a whole separate journey for women? The hero’s journey, after all, was applied to all sorts of books when discussed in the classroom. Some starred female protagonists. Hell, my teacher used The Hunger Games as our classroom example. To me, it seemed like one of those feminist takes on topics that… maybe didn’t really need a feminist take.

But the title intrigued me. What did I have to lose? Worst case, it wasted my time and I moved on with my life. Besides, I was writing a novel with a female protagonist. So I took the bait.

THE PROBLEM WITH CAMPBELL

In 1981, Maureen Murdock, a therapist that worked closely with women, had noticed something troubling: many of her patients, despite having achieved great successes in their careers, expressed a strong dissatisfaction with their wins in the workplace. The women often described “a sense of sterility, emptiness, and dismemberment, even a sense of betrayal”. This pattern was so prevalent that Murdock was compelled to ask the question: is this a universal experience for women?

She theorized that these women were choosing to follow a life model that denied them who they were—one rooted in patriarchy—which was the root cause of their distress2.

So she reached out to our good friend Joseph Campbell to get his take. His response? Women don’t need to make a journey at all.

In the whole mythological tradition the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.

— Joseph Campbell

Wow. So, according to Campbell, the hero’s journey was truly meant to be a hero’s journey—as in masculine.

I had to check for myself. Surely Murdock was taking him out of context, right? So I borrowed The Heroine’s Journey from the library and searched for the Campbell quote. Sure enough, it was a direct quote from the man himself.

Yikes.

Perhaps in the past, women were expected to just be there, but I sincerely doubt that’s where they wanted to be. In today’s day and age, women yearn to make something of themselves, pursuing careers and working towards goals beyond the home. I know that’s at the very least true of myself3.

So Murdock decided to analyze the pattern she’d noticed in her patients and craft her own version of the hero’s journey—one that was deeply rooted in the feminine experience. She called it the Heroine’s Journey.

A NEW ARCHETYPAL STORY

Just as our English teachers used diagrams to aid in the understanding of the Hero’s Journey, I adapted a diagram of Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey to better showcase the differences between them.

One thing you might notice right away—there’s no threshold in the Heroine’s Journey. At least not one outlined as clearly, though you could argue that it could go right before the Road of Trials begins.

This was intentional.

Movement through the stages of the journey is cyclic, and a person may be at several stages of the journey at one time. […] The heroine’s journey is a continuous cycle of development, growth, and learning.

— Maureen Murdock

With that key difference out of the way, what exactly does all of this mean?

Let’s start at the beginning.

SEPARATION FROM THE FEMININE

According to Murdock, the cycle begins with the heroine searching for her identity, often sparked by a change in her life—leaving for college, finalizing a divorce, changing careers, or being faced with an empty nest as some examples. This feeling of no longer aligning with her “old self” is the call to adventure for our heroine, and marks the start of her journey.

This is often marked by the heroine noticing that in her society, femininity is associated with negative things: passivity, weakness, and nonproductivity. She may notice that the women around her embody these traits—her mother staying in a relationship that doesn’t serve her, or her friends becoming dependent on their male partners.

These behaviors frustrate the heroine, and in her search for identity, she veers away from the feminine. In other words, she claims to be “not like the other girls”. This process often involves a falling out between the heroine and the mother figure in her life as she associates many of these feminine traits with the woman who raised her.

IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE

If the heroine is “not like other girls”, then where lies her identity?

Once again, our heroine observes the world around her. Who are the people in power? The people who act and lead those around them? No matter where she looks, the answer is clear.

This is the part in the cycle where the heroine moves into the territory of, “I’m one of the guys”. In an effort to prove that she has a good mind, can follow through, and is emotionally and financially independent, she seeks role models in the men in her life like her father, or in other women who identify with the masculine—they make her feel smart, driven, and successful.

ROAD OF TRIALS

With the belief that anything other than doing “important work in the world” has no intrinsic value—a belief upheld by the patriarchal society our heroine finds herself in—she heads off.

During this part of the cycle, our heroine fights the proverbial dragon for its treasure—the dragon being life’s challenges, and the treasure being some kind of great achievement. This could be going through college for a degree or working to the bone for a promotion.

In the Hero’s Journey, this is the Challenges and Temptations section of the story.

Unlike the Hero’s Journey, the heroine gets her gratification early into this part of the cycle. She wins the promotion, gets the degree, earns a high salary. She’s at the top of the dragon’s hoard of gold, triumphant, having found the boon of success.

But she quickly realizes it isn’t all she dreamed of.

THE CRISIS

At the end of the Road of Trials, the heroine is overworked, tired, and still seeking that “high” associated with the only thing she believes has intrinsic value—doing. She looks for the next rung on the ladder to climb, all the while asking herself what it’s all for.

This is often where the heroine feels a disconnect with who she is as a person, and the values she’s placed upon herself in order to be perceived as successful. It’s at this point that many of Murdock’s patients sought treatment, expressing dissatisfaction with the path they’d chosen, feeling lonely, empty, and truly not themselves.

In her desire to separate herself from the negative aspects of the feminine, the heroine has sacrificed all that is good about the feminine: her health, her dreams, and her intuition. At this point in her cycle, she mourns a disconnect with other women in her life, a lack of time for her creative hobbies, and has difficulty identifying with her own inner child.

This aligns with the Hero’s Journey’s Abyss. Where the hero dies, so too does the heroine.

DESCENT TO THE GODDESS

Rather than simply die and be reborn through abstract means, however, Murdock claims that in her journey, the heroine descends to meet the goddess. In her “rock bottom”, she feels anger, guilt, and shame. Often, the heroine takes a pause in her doing and focuses instead on being.

Murdock suggests that during this time, the heroine finds peace within Mother Nature, and in her own bodily cycle. She honors that which is inherently woman, and reconnects with the femininity that she had thus far suppressed within herself.

HEALING THE MOTHER / DAUGHTER SPLIT

With the revelation found by reconnecting with the goddess comes an understanding of womanhood and an urge to reconnect with the feminine. The heroine during this part of the cycle forgives her mother and the women in her life, and recognizes in them not only the negative feminine aspects that she despised early on in the cycle, but the positive as well: their intuition, their empathy, and their compassion.

The heroine sees in herself the strengths that her mother instilled in her, and she works to heal that which was broken. In this, she begins to identify herself with the feminine without apology.

HEALING THE WOUNDED MASCULINE

However, identifying with the feminine isn’t enough, for the heroine now has a better understanding of the masculine. Where once she viewed the masculine as purely positive, she now understands that it, too, has its drawbacks: a lack of time for connection and never resting at the constant fear of not doing.

It’s at this stage that the heroine must come to terms with the fact that by following the Hero’s Journey outlined to her by the men in her life, she sacrificed a lot of herself in the process. But that doesn’t negate the skills she learned or the achievements she made during that stage in her life—in fact, many of the experiences she gained were very valuable.

Healing the wounded masculine, then, is all about accepting the good parts of her internal masculine—the leadership, the ambition, the independence—while recognizing the parts of it that were toxic to her sense of self.

INTEGRATION OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE

This part of the cycle marks the end. The heroine has reconnected with her femininity, and has come to recognize her inner masculinity, and now must find a balance between them. She recognizes that she can be both ambitious, intellectual, and independent, and compassionate, intuitive, and creative.

She finds in herself her true identity—one that incorporates both the masculine and the feminine.

ELARETH’S JOURNEY

So where does Elareth land on this journey?

Honestly? Not where I expected.

When I first started mapping her arc onto Murdock’s framework, I thought, “Perfect! Female protagonist, journey of self-discovery—this should fit like a glove.” But the more I dug, the more I realized that Elareth’s story is doing something… different.

For starters, Elareth's mother is absent—she died in childbirth. Her memory haunts the story as a reminder that kindness was always an option, but there's no living mother figure for Elareth to rebel against or reconcile with. And in Virelia, power isn't structured around gender the way Murdock's framework assumes. Women aren't systematically treated as lesser. Corruption and birthright are the real villains here, not patriarchy. So Elareth never separates from the feminine to begin with—she has no reason to.

Rather than distance herself from it, Elareth leans into her femininity early on in her childhood. As a princess with a doting father, she was given everything she could ever want in life. This afforded her the space to be soft, nurturing, and creative. Rather than align her identity with the external masculine, represented by her tyrannical father, her strengths lay with her empathy and compassion. This is why she was sent to Withermark during the protests to calm the people in the first place.

And even after her father is dethroned and executed, Elareth doesn't suddenly embrace masculine power structures. She sees firsthand what harm comes from wielding the throne, and she wants nothing to do with it. No crown, no politics, no leadership. She sees corruption in the system and chooses a simpler life—one separated from it all.

Elareth's Road of Trials looks different too. She's not chasing success or validation—she's trying to atone. Every monster she kills, every underpaid bounty she accepts, is penance for what she allowed to happen under her father's rule. She's not climbing a ladder4; she's digging herself out of a hole she didn't even dig. Her mercenary work isn't about “doing” for the sake of achievement—it's about survival and the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, she can earn back some shred of worth.

So what gives? Why doesn’t Elareth’s story fit neatly into the Heroine’s Journey?

Simple—because her journey isn’t about reconciling masculine and feminine identity.

Elareth's arc centers on inherited guilt, complicity, and whether people can truly change. She's grappling with the question: Am I defined by my past, or can I choose differently? That's a different kind of internal journey than what Murdock outlines, even though both are deeply concerned with identity and transformation.

And honestly? That’s okay.

Not every story about a woman needs to fit the Heroine's Journey, just like not every story about a man needs to fit the Hero's Journey. These frameworks are tools, not mandates. What matters is understanding what your story is doing and why.

WHAT I’M TAKING INTO MY WRITING

Learning about Murdock's work has made me think about what I might explore in future stories—and what I might layer into Elareth's arc in revision. Even if the framework doesn't fit perfectly, there are pieces worth keeping.

Take the 'descent to the goddess'—that moment where all seems lost, so the heroine is forced to look deep within herself and reconnect with an aspect she thought was gone forever. Imagine a warrior who's spent years hardening herself suddenly having to sit with her grief, her vulnerability, the parts of herself she buried to survive. That moment of reckoning? That's powerful storytelling. And as I'm reworking everything past the midpoint of my outline, this framework has given me a lot to think about.

I’m also drawn to the mother-daughter split—not just the conflict itself, but the reconciliation. Every woman I know has experienced a period where she and her mother couldn’t see eye to eye. Finding a way to forgive and move forward? That’s always a struggle.

What fascinates me is that it’s about more than just conflict—it’s about a daughter seeing her mother as a whole person, flaws and all, and choosing forgiveness anyway. That kind of emotional complexity is rich territory. Elareth never knew her mother, but she had Nieva, her nurse. What if Elareth resents her for not steering her in the right direction? What if that relationship needs healing too? That’s worth exploring.

I'm curious to see what other stories have used the Heroine's Journey as a foundation—what came out of following the framework more closely. But for now, I'll be cherry-picking the pieces that resonate and weaving them into my own work.

Have you read stories that follow the Heroine's Journey? I'd love to hear what resonated with you—drop a comment below.

Leave a comment

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I felt the knot that had been living in my stomach for the past three months tighten. When I lost my job in July—a gap in my work authorization—HR assured me I’d be able to return once it was resolved.

Whether it’s five months or eight, we have no plans to fill your position while you’re gone.

My green card came three months later. It was too late. According to my former manager, they had given my position to an internal hire just six weeks into my unemployment. I was devastated.

Seeking a job in this economy meant wading through postings that didn’t fit my skill set, were excited to underpay me, or were straight-up scams. I was prepared for the rejections. What I wasn’t prepared for was the silence—companies ghosting me without so much as a “no.”

My self-confidence plummeted to depths previously unknown. I couldn’t do anything right. What was worse: I’d been the breadwinner. Now my husband had to pick up my slack while finishing his degree.

With my life flipped upside-down, I felt lost. What was I going to do if I couldn’t find a job in my field? I’d graduated with a four-year degree in Computer Science, spent three years in the cybersecurity industry, and now… nothing?

One night, scrolling through job boards that all blurred together, I closed my laptop and thought: What if I just... tried something new? What if I did something I actually cared about?

So I decided to go back to my roots—my passions.

I decided to write a novel.1

It was a slow start—I hadn’t written anything in years, after all. Nothing substantial, anyway. It’s not like software engineers needed to write stories about their code, and the last paper I’d written was back in college.

But, slowly, I shook off the rust. And I got writing.

THE FALSE START

Three days before November, my Discord exploded. Notifications popped up every five seconds, it was impossible to ignore. So I poked my head in, and it was buzzing—people sharing their ideas for their books, tools they were hoping to use, and how to set up writing sprints. Novel November was coming up, and people were hyped2.

So I dove in.

The idea was simple: Elareth, the protagonist, was a crowned princess whose loving father was overthrown in a coup and executed, with the story following her as she finds the strength to accept her destiny and come out of hiding. It was a classic hero’s journey. I crafted a skeletal outline, and trusted in my ability to make shit up to carry me the rest of the way.

I failed fantastically.

Two weeks in, I wanted to strangle my characters and tear it all down. In the eight years since I last wrote long-form fiction, I’d lost my uncanny ability to write engaging prose on the fly. The pace demanded by the challenge hurt my writing. My characters were cardboard cut-outs. The plot felt cliché and anti-climactic. And if I was forced to write one more word about these bitches, I might just throw myself out a window.

One of my best friends asked me, “What makes your story unique? It sounds like the kind of story I could get from just cutting and pasting my favorite parts of other popular books.” She meant to help me strengthen what I had, but all I heard was: You’ve failed at the one thing you thought you could still do right.

I couldn’t look at my writing for days. When I finally did, I knew: I couldn’t fix this. It was rotten at the foundation.

So I scrapped it all.

Halfway through Novel November—two weeks and 17,000 words in—I threw everything I’d written to the wind. It wasn’t easy. I cried more than once to my husband, convinced I’d lost my skill in the one thing I was still good at.

But that’s the thing about endings, isn’t it? They often mark the beginning of something new.

A PLANE RIDE AND REVOLUTION

With Thanksgiving coming up, I’d put away any thoughts of my book. I told myself it was a bust—that the story was just not worth writing about. We went to visit my family up north for the holidays. I helped my grandparents in and out of their wheelchairs on our way to various holiday events, and savored every minute of reprieve.

By the time we boarded our plane back home, I was exhausted. Three jam-packed days, plus a multi-hour flight delay3. I opened my phone and scrolled as we waited for take-off: a post about the Trillion Peso March. Protestors were calling for the president of the Philippines to step down after countless deaths from flooding—deaths that could have been avoided if the money budgeted for flood prevention hadn't been pocketed by politicians instead.

The timing was eerie—I’d been helping my husband research Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines who was ousted during the People Power Revolution in 19864. The current sitting president? His son. I searched for more footage, more news reports, only to find out it was happening live.

My husband and I huddled together on the cold plane, sharing a pair of earphones, and watched as speaker after speaker took the stage, sharing their grievances with the current administration. Political dynasties were called out. Blatant corruption was called out. The lack of investment into education was called out. We listened as Catriona Gray, Miss Universe 2018, stood before the crowd and called for the Filipino people to stand up for their country and demand accountability and justice for themselves and their fellow man.

“Why do we allow this to happen to ourselves again and again? When are we going to wake up? What more do we need?”

I was angry.

Angry about the deaths that could have been prevented. About the money that was pocketed behind closed doors. About the suffering my people had endured for years, believing that change would never come.

But I was also inspired.

I was thrown back to 1986—the footage of over two million peaceful protestors creating human barricades to prevent Marcos’ military from passing, nuns and priests surrounding rebel tanks to escort them safely across Manila, and the strength of the Filipino people demanding better treatment.

It sparked something in me. That’s what was missing from my story—a princess fallen from grace was boring, but a revolution? The anger, the hope? The visceral feeling of pride in people demanding better for themselves? I realized I wanted to elicit those same emotions in my readers.

The thought that the dictator’s son was now sitting in power pulling the same corrupt shit made me sick. How could our country allow this to happen? And why, when given the opportunity, did he choose to walk the same path?

With that came a question above all others that wouldn’t leave me alone.

THE HEART

Are the children of bad people free to make different choices?

That question spurred me into action. I took out a pen and notebook, and went to work jotting down ideas. What if the princess’ father wasn’t a good king at all, but a tyrant? What if she had been complicit in the corruption—groomed from a young age to normalize suffering for her own gain?

The next day, I got to work.

I outlined the book from ground zero. Taking inspiration from the People Power Revolution and the current political climate of the Philippines, I began to craft my world—one where a princess could choose differently than her father. All the while, I kept my key question at the center: What if, when given the opportunity to change her path, she took it?

I was deep in this outlining process when I received a call from a friend. He was distraught. After moving cross-country, then abroad a year later, he felt alone and depressed. He couldn't find a job that paid rent. “I don’t know why I keep trying,” he told me. “Maybe I deserve this.”

I'd been trying my best to support him, to keep his head above water. But the same emotions kept surfacing in our conversations: the self-loathing and the belief that he must be a bad person—that the world had decided to punish him. He began to self-sabotage. He refused help. Worse, he'd actively put himself in harm's way. He didn't believe his situation could ever change, so why bother trying?

I suppose I subconsciously ended up writing Elareth for him. I wanted him to see that going through trauma and making mistakes doesn’t make you irredeemable. But forgiveness starts with yourself—you have to first believe you’re worth saving.

That’s how Elareth’s story truly became one of redemption. She isn’t just following in her father’s footsteps—she’s choosing something different, and learning to be kinder to herself while doing it.

MOVING FORWARD

I’m currently seven chapters5 into writing my first draft. Elareth is a fallen princess with a lot of heart, stubbornness, and shit to work through. The writing process is messy and hard, and I don’t have all the answers.

But if you’ve made it this far, maybe you’ll care to follow my journey anyway. I’ll be documenting everything—my wins, my failures, the scenes that make me want to bash my skull through my computer screen. Character deep-dives, craft thoughts, maybe some excerpts when I'm feeling brave. Shouting to the void, one might say, hoping someone might hear and think the message is for them.

So, if you’ve ever felt like your past defines you, or wondered if people can really change, or even just love a good fantasy story—welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

What part of your past feels like it defines you?

Leave a comment and tell me your answer—I read every response.

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