Reflection
Ocean cottage, Pacific Grove, CA — March 31, 2025
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton
A story is a journey into unknown territory. Maybe your character thinks they know what they’ll find there but they find something else instead. Is the territory lonely? Is it peopled? Are the trials they endure born of their own personality, or of something thrown at them from the outside? Will the tests they face scar them, make them stronger, transform them? Regardless, nothing is the same afterwards. And that’s what makes it a story worth telling.
You are telling your story because it has meaning for you. Maybe it’s a true story, something you’ve experienced or heard, or maybe it’s a story that’s come to life in your imagination. Either way, you’ve reflected on it, burned it down to coals, to its essence. Now you are sending it back into the world to catch fire.
Your deep understanding of the core of your story is what’s going to keep readers mesmerized — like happening upon a sunset’s reflection in the windows of a seaside cottage.
