Heart and Head
Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.
~From the movie Finding Forrester
I write with my heart. I don't know any other way than to sort of spill out what's jumping around in my head, begging for release, onto the paper. It's like finally letting go of a "good cry" (and sorry, fellas, if you don't know what that's like, but for a lot of women, a "good cry" is extremely cathartic--we may even rent sad movies in order to have one). Sometimes, it's as if I have this fury in me, and I have to just regurgitate it and get it out and then, and only then, can I sigh and relax. It's hard to explain, but that's my best attempt at describing my process. That's what writing my first draft from the heart is.
But then the head takes over. I spent well over a decade editing other people's manuscripts before I sold my first novel. I learned how to get rid of passive voice, how to shape and hone someone's words. My own words. I learned, from much banging of my head against my desk (thank you, Jon Van Zile) to ruthlessly delete words that didn't propel my scenes. To cut whole chapters that just sat there, doing nothing but showing off pretty words. I learned to edit with my head.
I know a writer who once bitterly resented that she could not get published. She was writing what was "hot" (at the time, it was chick lit), and she could craft a sentence. Three top editors in a row passed on her manuscript--and all three said variations on the same theme--"no heart," "paint by numbers writing," and "I didn't care about any of the characters." This writer could target market, but the heart piece was missing. I could see it--I kept saying "dig deeper"--but you can't really SHOW someone how to. It's a process in which you find your passion for the work and stop chasing publication by creating what's "hot" for instead what "speaks to you."
On the flip side, I have seen enough horrid manuscripts that come through the slush pile to know that heart's not enough. You can see the person poured their soul into their work. It feels naked and autobiographical as you read it. There's rawness there. But it's so poorly executed that the head's missing completely.
They go hand in hand. It's what I aim for in everything I write.
Thoughts?
19 comments:
I think it's about being willing to be naked. To write fiction I think you have to forget about polite company, and reputation (in the sense of polite company) and you have to be willing to be emotionally vulnerable and be naked.
Most people I think have nudity issues. Even on the page.
Hi Zoe:
I agree. There was nothing so naked as having my first book published. It opened up all these feelings about how I felt about strangers reading a book and maybe speculating on my life. Then, in a few newspaper interviews, I found that the interviewers had actually READ my work and had questions about x or y. It felt very strange.
And at the same time, I can't let any of those thoughts enter into my writing. You still have to just be willing to write what's inside.
E
Raising hand here! I write with my heart too. I think it would be a difficult process to learn if you were clueless. Not impossible, just different. And like you said, it's good to have a head too. :)
Hi Erica!
I love reading your blog. Lainey introduced me and it has very quickly become a daily ritual.
I agree, writing what's in your heart makes you feel very vulnerable. Maybe thats why it hurts when those "stripes" are earned. : )
C~
Hi ladonna:
I agree . . . it's a process. When I first wrote, my short stories were always either VERY raw (too much heart) or about these characters I totally didn't get inside of--like assassins and things . . . just very removed from me, with no heart.
E
Hi Colleen:
WELCOME! :-)
And so, so true! certain books of mine make me feel VERY vulnerable.
E
I'm trying to write with my heart. That's why I switched to women's fiction. WF is all about heart (or it should be), and I felt my other work didn't have that depth.
I love the quote from Finding Forrester, and also what Zoe said about willing to be naked. If I didn't have kids in here once in awhiel, I'd tape WRITE NAKED on my monitor.
Edie:
LOL! My kids are kind of used to my oddities. :-) I may just have to tape that up.
E
An excellent point. Writing can leave you feeling so exposed, which can be difficult. There are plenty of stories out there where the author is just phoning it in. Some readers, those who don't write, may not notice, the same way that those of us who are not musically inclined may not recognize if a virtuoso is putting his/her heart and soul into the music. Which is why I think books like that do still occasionally get published: those who don't notice that missing soul just appreciate a good plot.
Hmmm . . . Booklady . . . that is really very interesting. Thinking of thie woman I cited in my example in the original post, I think if the average person, a nonwriter, picked up the manuscript, they would think it perfectly servicable. But editors and writers could read it and just find it "eh" because there was a "phone it in" aspect.
E
Finding Forrester is one of my favorite movies! I agree, although I kind of switch between heart, left brain, and right brain, even in one sitting.
I can't really get into a story until I know my character's weakness or hurt, and then I have to love her and care deeply about getting her to a place of healing.
Hi Spy:
That's an interesting take (healing). I, too, often look at how they're broken. And usually by the end of the book, they are still very broken and flawed people, only they have grown somewhat, learned something, softened an edge or learned to trust . . . but I do have to know what's broken or wounded.
E
Hi Erica,
In a recent issue of Poets & Writers, the the revered and extremely difficult to please editor of Pushcart (I wish I could remember his name!) was quoted as saying that he loved first novels because the author had to write them. They were written with heart and passion. He hated novels that were written to "sell."
Hi Tena:
Pushcart is one of those really passionate literary magazines. That's a neat perception on the editor's part. And I think it is true. I was midway (a good 150 pages) into a novel (one I still love, but was more women's fiction), when I started Spanish Disco. I know my writers' group thought I was nuts, but I had totally lost any passion for the first novel--maybe even never HAD any passion for it (I think I was passionate about one of the POVs but not the others and it showed). I wrote Spanish Disco in two months of intensity--it flew out of me and felt so "true" and honest and raw. And it sold inside of a month or so to the fifth publisher who saw it (and my rejections were very positive, too).
E
I wrote Spanish Disco in two months of intensity--it flew out of me and felt so "true" and honest and raw. And it sold inside of a month or so to the fifth publisher who saw it (and my rejections were very positive, too).
Wow! I'm going to buy a copy! Can't wait to read it.
Tena:
It's four years old (I think . . . maybe a little more). Might be hard to get a copy. But it's one of those books I still love looking back.
E
I'll try Amazon.
Definitely. In fact, I put down my novel because I was afraid to write to the heart of it. I was going to a place that I was scared to see or be in. Though, like a mantra, I said to myself, write to the heart, I couldn't.
Writing really is an act of courage.
sarah:
I never believed it was (a courageous thing) until I had to write/was compelled to write The Roofer, and suddenly, I got what it meant to write from that place and how scary it felt, like jumping off a cliff.
E
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