The Right Write Follow blog

Write Your Heart

(First posted on Adventures in Text) 

It’s so tempting to look at the book market and think ‘ooo, stories about albino baboons finding their one true banana are selling well, I’ll write one of those!’. It’s also very easy to think ‘I have this wonderful story in my head, but no-one will be interested in it’.

Both of those thoughts are wrong. They will lead you to a sub-optimal outcome and, most likely, a weaker story.

Because that wonderful story in your head? The one that is scrabbling to be written, whispering to you when you least expect it (or are trying to sleep), or growing every time you trip over something in your day-to-day life? That’s the story your heart wants to tell.

When you write it, it’ll be full of all the passion that is pushing it into your consciousness. It’ll carry with it the love you feel for it, even if the story itself is dark and painful, or disturbing, or tortured, or sappy, or playful. It will carry those emotions with it all the way to your readers, like a heady scent.

When a story is forced and not felt, it shows. It lacks the fire of true purpose, and if you don’t believe in it, right down to your core, neither will your readers.

If it makes you laugh and cry and hide under the bed, it’ll do the same for your readers.

Does it mean you can’t experiment and try something different? Does it mean you shouldn’t try to write something marketable? Of course not.

But if you want to write the best story you can, fall in love with it. Find a way. Build in the things that move you. If it touches your heart, that’s a good start. If writing it spills your insides out onto paper, even better.

Writing what moves you will move others, and they will love it even when they’re crying.

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