Troof

[lagilman]

with a nod to my yoda-wench out in San Francisco, here's the ugly truth:

if we don't feel, whether by choice or design or accident of fate -- odds are we don't write. and what we might write? won't make anyone else feel, either.

I'll take the feeling and the writing, bad as it may be some days. Grist. Mill. Churn, baby, churn.

Comments

[debg.livejournal.com]

And your yoda wench in San Francisco is nodding like a bobblehead.

I'll take the feeling. I told rozk elsewhere that I wouldn't trade one filthy heartbroken tearstained memory I've got.

It's how we're wired.

[lagilman]

The trick is not to go looking intentionally for the Pain. You need to feel the Happy, too.

Sometimes, some folk forget that, they're so caught up in the Great!Artist!Trauma! whirligig...

[debg.livejournal.com]

Definitely. But my point is, you can't choose to take one and ignore the other.

[rhonawestbrook.livejournal.com]

Tis the gospel truth.

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

True enough but consider it from the other end - suppose you are a writer with a slight case of Aspergers, a dash of sociopathy, and a strong case of objectivity - the war to overcome these internal deficits cannot be understated. To some degree the war is aligned with intimacy, both of self and of expression. I tend to come from the perspective that a writer doesn't make a person feel but that they expose themselves and the reader exposes themselves too and both feel.

[lagilman]

oh believe me, I understand that POV all too damned well, if only as a close-up observer. But I stand by my statement -- if you are not engaged in the feling (or the struggle to feel) then the writing is not as effective in evoking an emotional reaction in turn. It may be clever and smart and of Much Lit'ry Merit, but it's not going to cut into anyone's heart.

And it's the stuff that cuts the heart that is remembered, if only for the scars.