by Ayesha Siddiqui

Outdoors where I live there is an overgrown orange tree. The tree has likely not been pruned in many years, judging by the amount of growth on the branches, the offshoots like spiderwebs, crisscrossed limbs holding an overabundance of oranges that fall to the earth too soon or too late, the fruit collected never ready.

Once I volunteered to prune trees in a garden. An arborist led us through determining what to remove, finding the nodes, and the angle to cut away anything no longer serving the tree. We removed competing branches and sliced back anything beyond the most promising nodes. Whenever we’d ask if the tree had been trimmed back enough, the arborist would tell us to cut even more, to keep going, that it was good for the tree.

I could compare editing to pruning. I suppose that’s the most logical connection. But when I think of pruning it is not the words themselves, it is the very essence of what makes you write.

On a tree, nodes are the quiet and often hidden places where so much life begins. Offshoots form, leaves grow, flowers bloom. Nodes contain wisdom to help the tree heal and maintain its structure.

Our relationship to writing grows and evolves differently with each season in life. Perhaps we write for relief, then for understanding, then for exploring, or sentiment, or at times the reason is just a giant question mark. Sometimes others tell us why we write. It gets so muddled after a while, the tangled branches becoming so thick we can no longer reach our own nodes.

When the path forward is too overgrown to see, walk back along your own branches, back towards the first nodes of promise that made you do this to begin with: the story you wanted to tell, the thing you’ll probably never stop writing about, when a stranger told you something kind about your work and they meant it. Prune yourself until it feels simple again.

This is your art, and it is correct.