Writing From The Heart

 

Write from the heart. That is the strongest, yet most frightening advice given to writers. But we must start there or else what would our writing be worth? How is it done? How does one go about writing from the heart?

I have been writing for several years, but I don't think I've yet learned to really write from my heart. So I cannot share a tried and true, step by step way to go about this. However, I can share what I've learned already just by wrestling with it.

Writing from the heart involves four things.

Learning

Writing from the heart is fundamentally about you. Who you are and what you are made of. Sometimes we think we know ourselves pretty well. But ask two people to describe you, a friend and an enemy, and you may find you are not the person you think you know. Try descibing yourself and see if you can be honest. This is where it can get scary. Are you always easy to get along with? What secrets make you do what you do? What has touched your life and made you better? Before you can write from the heart to touch others through your writing you have to know yourself.

Not Censoring

Dont press Delete! The first draft of anything, a poem, novel, or research paper, needs to be written from the heart. The first draft of anything is solely your writer's heart at work. Your mind can edit later for the final presentation. So don't censor yourself in the first draft. If you had a thought that sounds a bit silly, leave it there! If what you're writing makes you angry and blunt, don't soften it! You never know what those raw words will inspire later on as you continue writing.

Not Tailoring to Popularity

When I sit down to write, I am often tempted to go explore what other writers have already said on the subject. I want to see what they think. I want to see whose opinion is more widely appreciated. I want to see which style, character type, setting, or idea is more....popular. This isn't an entirely bad thing. It's very wise to have thoroughly researched whatever it is you're writing. But when you put what's in your writer's heart on hold till you see how it aligns with what is currently popular...that ain't being you. That's trying to copy someone else. I'm not bashing writing in a popular genre. All I am saying is when you're writing from your heart, make sure it's you and not something else you read.

Never Stopping

Once you start, never stop. A real writer is a beginner that never stopped. And once you start writing from your heart, doing anything else is only betraying yourself. If writing is your real passion in life than it should always be infused with You.

My Heart for Writing

When I considered writing about this topic, I of course had to sit and think of what writing from my own heart looks like. After following what I just shared with you, this is what it came out.

This is in my blood. I know it is. I love the way words move, like the ocean. Sometimes simply deep and clear, in and out. Other times leaping and crashing in a tumult. I love making the words from my heart move like that. I cannot stop seeing the world this way. Seeing words this way. If I were to abandon this deep desire to be who I am I would be binding away my heart from some of the most beautiful things I know.

In the same way I cannot seperate my compulsion to write from the call of my faith. My faith has been written on my heart by the very One who fashioned me. When I was saved I became new, and God's Story became the most wonderful to me. So whatever overflows onto paper it will have come from the heart that is seeking to fall all the more deeply in love with Christ.

I believe, that whatever God has gifted me to do, I am to do it well. I am to do it to the best of my ability. As far as God wants me to take my love for writing I will use it as a platform to share the Story that changed my life. This living, breathing, Word of God.

That is my heart for writing.

 

 

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