Facts about Writing from the Heart
Posted: Saturday, May 23, 2009
by Jean Purcell
OpineBooks.com
Trying to write from the heart can feel like wading in sloppy mire or tiptoeing through a field of hidden bombs.
One way to be encouraged not to stifle feelings or to overdo them is the knowledge that your story or reactions might touch and help readers in good ways you never anticipated.
During a rough patch of my own a long time ago, I received much comfort from a book by a father whose little son had died. I had not shared such a loss, but I was working my way through a different kind of loss.
From all the pages of that book that I bought on the spur of the moment during a lunch break one day years ago, that was what I took, held close, and remembered.
After that time, I began to write a book. It became Not All Roads Lead Home, now with a second edition. The first edition, 1996 by a British publishing house, ended the story when major crises had been survived. Two people came through not only together but reunited.
Readers I met one-on-one or at book events for the first edition said they could not put the book down. They wanted to see how the dangers and issues were resolved. They felt the emotions of the story.
After that, some readers wanted to know what happened after that. Did life work after that? I decided to write a sequel, including the first part of the story from the first edition. The new subtitle was "A story of renewed love."
At a conference, a woman who bought a copy of the second edition of Not All Roads Lead Home told me that her marriage had broken up, yet she still hoped.
The following morning, I was in a small session as a listener when the same woman came in late and sat near me. At the end of the session, she came to sit with me and burst out, "I've been up most of the night reading your book. I've been crying, for I've seen things I never saw about myself."
I felt sad about her upset, but she said, "Do you know what struck me most? It was about an experience in Geneva you wrote about." She told me the connection and said that whatever happened, she was grateful for the new insights.
My words did not give those insights; they only served to touch her and her life experience in specific ways known only to her.
Here are my basic beliefs about writing from the heart-what it looks like and what it can do:
1. Writing from the heart must be based on authentic things and events, not embroidered ones. As much as possible, the writer must stick with what really happened. Any dialog to help must be based on as accurate memory as possible, to convey to the reader what was going on then. Highly charged or emotive words are not always necessary, but good word choices are.
In the case of the first edition of my first book, I worked hard to show the tension in a controlled way, as it had happened. The trueness of a story can be powerful enough with accurate presentation.
2. Writing from the heart can include a calm approach. Facts of our lives, along with factual presentation of our reactions and actions, can have powerful effects upon specific readers. We do not have to intend an effect, but to intend to remain true to effects certain experiences or insights have had on us.
In the case of the last part of the new edition of my book, reactions to being far from home and family, with my husband, had power to move readers. I did not intend to move except as the story or thoughts might move through their realness.
3. However we seek to write from the heart, what most needs to concern us is that we give it our best writing at the time; it needs to be real: if we were inspired or downcast by something that happened, the reader will be more likely to get it and understand if we convey the experience as truly as possible.
It took 14 years to write my first book's first edition. It took a lot of hard work over a shorter time to write the second part for a second edition.
In both cases, I had people reading the manuscript. My husband read every word of the second edition's new parts and added much detail for his human migration and disaster work that changed the details of our lives overseas.
Some writers need to rein in emotions. Others need to dig for it, to help express what is real or was real. Either way, I believe every writer who needs to do it, can do it well and with good effects.
What does it mean to you as a writer to know that a connection with other people happened in a dynamic, possibly life-changing way, through what and how you wrote? You will not want to take that lightly, misuse or miss it.
What does it mean to us that our words can lead well or badly? What does it mean to realize the "power in the pen" or the "sword in the pen"?
Writing from the heart is not work for the careless. It is work mined from within our very lives, our feelings, hopes, and significant things that have touched us deeply. I think it's worth trying to do it better, as well as we can at the moment. Enjoy writing from the heart!
(c)2009 Jane Bullard
This Article has been viewed 176 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.