©Carolyn McBride August 2001

Every writer has written a piece that has come easily to them. No matter if it's a journal entry that goes on for pages or a single paragraph that may be the best thing that individual has ever written. It's the kind of writing that, once completed, the writer sits back and says to himself or herself "Wow! Where did THAT come from?" I'll tell you a secret. It comes from within. It has been said that the soul could write a masterpiece if only the body would listen, and this is sound advice. For years I agonized over how to write better until someone told me to write what my soul was whispering. Then I agonized over how to follow their advice. I know the answer now.

Writing with our hearts has been given many names. It has been called "writing down the bones", "writing with the barest essence of ourselves", or "taking dictation from the muse". But no matter what we may call it, IT is always the same thing. We are writing at our best when we follow our subconscious. It is here that our truest feelings emerge, it is this voice that speaks with unbridled honesty and frankness, and it is usually our best work. Why? Because we are not worrying about impressing our potential editors, or pleasing the agents, and dazzling friends with our brilliance. When we write for ourselves, we get closest to our true voice. People who teach writing say that the best way to learn how to do this is to sit and write for a limited amount of time. It needn't matter if we're writing about the line at the coffee shop that morning, or the death of our beloved dog. We are to write, they say, on any given topic for a limited time without stopping to edit along the way. When we cease to correct, polish and worry over a piece of writing, we give ourselves the time and space to write what is in our hearts. So like a toddler learning to walk, we must learn how to write without worrying. Even now as I write this article, I desperately want to correct my fragmented sentences and get rid of the annoying lines that Microsoft Office is putting on my screen. But with gritted teeth, I push on. Not correcting, editing or stopping unless my five year old needs something.

Another way to write better is to do it as uninterrupted as you can. I can hear you parents laughing, I live with three kids, and I know how difficult it is to write without interruption. This very minute, the eldest is playing a video game with an annoying piece of background music and the middle child is playing an imaginary game at a whisper while we wait for the baby to fall asleep. I am lucky if I get half an hour a day where there is not someone asking me for something. Now I am being chattered at from the five year old and all I can make out is that it's something about pinball. So, yeah, I understand how hard it is to write uninterrupted. But it's also something very necessary. Your friends stop by for a quick chat, and they don't understand why you don't want to move away from the computer. They don't comprehend how easily that gem of a sentence can disappear when someone sticks their head in the door and shouts "Hello, anyone home?" Sadly, most folks don't care either. It seems they would respect your work more if you were getting paid for it, but there are some that don't see writing as work. Regrettably, some people require a firm touch. I tried this with a friend of mine recently. I had to explain that I needed to work on my writing column; I was long overdue. She nodded sagely, and then proceeded to prattle on about her day. In less time than it took me to make a sandwich, my train of thought was broken. And she couldn't have cared less.

We've all heard it said, "Write what you know". I agonized over that for a long time until one day while I was in the shower I had a revelation. Don't think about it in the most formal terms of what you know, but rather, write what you love. Best selling author Elizabeth Berg put it beautifully when she said, "The knowledge can be learned; the passion can't." I was intimidated when I tried to list what I knew enough to write about, but the list grew quickly when I itemized what I love to write about. Suddenly I had all kinds of ideas for fan fiction, freelance articles, and short stories alike. If you get lost in mysteries, write one. If you enjoy romances, try your hand at penning a mushy, romantic love story. Don't concern yourself with word count or a possible market, or anything else. Just write it. Even if you project your interests to a character, it will make that person a little more credible. I have a character in my mystery that, in some aspects, is very different from me, but friends of mine see a lot of me in her. Morgan is a forensic investigator, where I am not. But she enjoys a good game of nine-ball billiards, has a Golden Retriever named Socrates (which I once did also) and is passionate about Guinness Ale. I believe that I make her a more solid character because I have given her very real personality traits. Despite society's non-acceptance of smoking, many authors have a minor character addicted to cigarettes. It adds a level of credibility for some readers if they see a character in the story with a vice. I feel the same way about characters as I do about my country's leaders. I want them honest and authentic, not a vice-free, bleached version of perfection. I write my characters the same way.

Someone, somewhere, right now is buying a book, opening a magazine they've purchased or logging onto the internet to catch up with a short story on a website somewhere. Reading will never go out of style, no matter how popular the Internet becomes. Even though laptops are becoming less of a large investment and are get lighter all the time, there's nothing like getting into bed with a good book. I've gone to bed many nights and caught up on my favorite fan fiction with the laptop, but there are just as many nights that I've curled up with whatever book I'm reading at the time. My mother instilled a love of reading in me while I was very young. I have fond memories of going to the library with my brother and mother and emerging hours later with more books than we could comfortably carry. And it hasn't changed a bit in my adult life either; despite the many hours I spend on the net and my laptop. On the floor beside my bed rests a stack of books and magazines that threatens to take over the bedroom, and my face is well known at the local bookstore and library. Prisoners are free when they read, grandmothers in their nighties comfortably nested in their beds with a good book, teenage girls hunkered down in a stairwell at school that are engrossed in a book; nearly everyone reads. Why not write as well as you can and be a part of a process that brings so much joy to so many? If you have fun while you write, someone reading your work later on will be all the richer for it. So write true, write well, and have fun!

Carolyn McBride