My friend Cat Valente wrote a great post about finally being described as “mighty.” She is one of the most eloquent writers that I know and is used to being called “lovely” (sometimes ad nauseum).
While I do think that Cat is lovely, I have multitudes of better descriptions for her. She describes this one little adjective as “illuminating” for her. She discusses how “lovely” is a feminine word and used so often to describe female writers that many people barely even notice it anymore. She wrote about feeling excited that someone uses a strong word like mighty (which, well, she is!) to describe her and her work.
She wrote, “And six years of publishing, I’ve been 90% lovely, and only ever 10% anything else. (Of which 5% is probably “awesome” and the other 5% are words that are not so nice.) I call for a hiatus on calling female writers lovely in write-ups, blogs, and articles. We are writers. This kind of thing does not become us.”
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