How to Be a Great Writer - Draw from Pure Emotion

There are hundreds of little sayings about what it takes to be a great writer, or what a great writer "is". One that has impacted me most profoundly in my own writing life is this one:

"You'll never be a writer if you're afraid to open yourself. Put yourself in every word, speak with your experience, and write from the heart."

It was a high school teacher who told me that, and she meant it literally. If you can't open yourself up like a book and let the insights you've learned to be true for yourself shine through in your writing, you're not writing honestly.

And with that in mind, let me share this little fact from the history of Sinclair Lewis. When he was invited to speak in a class of writing students, he showed up and asked a single question, "How many of you here are really serious about being writers?" When the hands started shooting up, he asked one more question, "Well, why aren't you all home writing?"

With that, he walked right out of the room.

To Be a Writer, You Must Write

It's easy to say that you want to be a writer. Since I was 11 and first saw my name in print, I had one ambition that I would happily spout to anyone willing to listen: I want to be a respected author. Not famous. Not rich. Just respected.

To that end, I have written every single day of my life since then (and no, we'll not go into the number of years that's adding up to be!).

We'll leave this simple, as it is actually very easy to understand: to be a writer, you have to write. Write every day, write every chance you get. You can't call yourself a writer until you perform the act of writing. Pure and simple.

Draw from Pure Emotion

The most affecting literature contains truth. It doesn't have to be a Nobel Prize-winning book to be emotionally gripping, and it doesn't have to be a smack in the face of society to contain truth.

So what does define truth as a writer? Emotion.

Jose Saramago was the first Portuguese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. A truly emotional author, he once told an interviewer about being honest to emotion by telling about his grandfather. After suffering a stroke, the man was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment and Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn't mark you for the rest of your life, you have no feeling."

Saramago was definitely not without feeling. It was his emotion as an author that led to his prize-winning work; he'd grown up the son of a peasant father and an illiterate mother, in a home with no books. The fact that he wrote so well was that he drew from his emotions.

How to Write Emotionally

It sounds cliche`, really. "Emotional Writing"; it sounds like something some hack would try to sell you on the Internet, promising to teach you to earn millions if you'll just shell out a hundred bucks.

The fact is that if you're going to be honest as a writer, you'll write with emotion. It isn't easy at first, but over time it will start to happen without conscious effort.

Start with memories of your childhood. Sit back with a journal or notebook and start talking on paper about the things that you remember most.

For instance, I remember my first dance so clearly it's the first thing I'd pen. I was in 5th grade and so awkward in myself, the tallest girl in class and the most developed, that I hid myself in a corner of the room and melted into the chair I was sitting on. When a boy that I'd had a crush on for as long as I could remember came over, the song "Hungry Eyes" was playing. He was dressed in white from head to toe, and he sat down beside me, saying that it was one of his favorite songs. I smiled and never once realized that he was spending the entire song sitting with me because both of us were too frightened to ask the other to dance.

The emotion that you find in replaying portions of your past is honest. It's real. And it's where you need to start.

With your little notebook of entries, start thinking about the characters in the story you're writing. How can something that has happened in your past be translated into the story, and how will it affect your characters? You know the emotions first-hand - you lived them - so writing them believably shouldn't be a problem.

As often as you can, use elements like this - real, honest emotion - at least once in each chapter or scene of your writing.

You'll be pleasantly surprised at how much more affecting your writing becomes.