Inside Out
I forget how many months ago a friend sent me an email, brief and to the point:
Been reading your stuff. What’s up?
This friend, she’s one of those rare finds who gets my heart. Back in another time, we often met over tea with lemon (once, I drank tea) at a restaurant I can’t remember or a dripping chocolate malt at Snuffy’s Malt Shop in St. Paul where we plunged the depths of Ezekiel and Hebrews and really, what’s the deal with Melchizedek?
She still gets my heart, even though we live across the country and I’m weeks behind on our email study of The Trivialization of God.
So when she notices things, I know enough to pay attention.
I asked her then what she meant. Her response was nearly as brief as her first observation:
I don’t know writing, I’m a scientist. But your heart’s not in it.
True enough.
She’d nailed it.
::
Sleeves, frankly, are too perilous a place to wear one’s heart, and I keep mine nicely guarded inside a warm fleece hoody. I like to think I posture and pose pretty well. And what better place but writing to do that? We measure our words, reveal only what we want to, hold tight what we want to keep.
And readers? They see the words. Not the heart.
They see what we want them to see.
As long as I’m careful, there’s no way to tell whether I’m laughing or crying when I put words to the page.
Right?
No, wrong.
My friend the scientist says wrong.
Julia Cameron says wrong.
Readers know these things.
::
As we wrap up the discussion of Julia Cameron’s Right to Write over at High Calling Blogs this week, I find her stretching me, pushing at me to raise the stakes. Keep my heart in the writing.
When people wonder what makes some writing readable and other writing less so, they are centering on the issues of stakes. Stakes are the answer to the question, “Why should I care?” The best answer to “Why should I care” is always “Because it matters very very much. (p. 215)
What the scientist noticed about my writing is that I had stepped out of it. I was trying some things, stupid things, things designed to run a little more traffic in the direction of my blog, but things that ultimately took my heart right off the page. (Which, if I stopped to think about it, would have the very opposite effect.)
Cameron observes that to expect you to be invested in what you’re reading, I had to invest in writing it.
“When a writer writes from the heart of what matters to him personally, the writing is often both personal and powerful. When a writer writes what he thinks the market needs — writes, in other words, without a personal investment — the standard of writing is often lowered along with the stakes.
Part of our duty as writers is to do the work of honestly determining what matters to us and to try to write about that. This may take a certain amount of courage. This may mean that we do not meet with immediate support from those who make decisions with an eye to the market. (p. 219)
Here in my smallish corner of the world, the market means little to me anymore. It did, briefly. And while it did, writing was work and got reactions like “What’s up?”
I’d be dishonest to say I don’t ever look at the numbers underneath. But the numbers don’t drive the writing; they’re just one way to help tell me if I’m getting the job done or not.
I’m afraid I still keep my heart safely tucked away most of the time, at least the larger part of it. Now and again if you’re paying attention you’ll see it slip out around a frayed cuff. But most of the time what I’m writing is at least coming from that part of me. It’s training my writing around what Cameron would call writing “from the inside out rather than the outside in.” (p. 220)
::
Perhaps a delight to many of you, we conclude the book discussion over at HCB this week. But you can still read up if you’d like. See Laura’s new post on Monday with links to the other participants.
As a reward for your patient indulgence throughout this diversion, I’ll be quiet most of the rest of this week. I’m putting the last touches on a three-part guest post from my granddad. At 102 years old, he nearly has a foot in three centuries. And he was telling stories long before Al Gore invented the Internet. I’m hoping to get one up for you shortly, so be sure to stop back for (until I’m proven otherwise) the only place on the web where you can read a guest post from a centenarian.
Photo: Inside Old House by Piotr Rudziewicz via Stock.xchng
Yes, a few times, I’ve seen a hurting heart still peek through the letters on the screen. And that makes you very human, very real–something difficult in this purely electronic form of friendship. Can’t wait for your grandfather’s post.
2010/07/18 at 9:54 PM
Thanks Jennifer. You’re one of the good things about this process.
2010/07/19 at 10:38 AM
I find your writing absolutely electric — even when you’re writing ABOUT writing.
Seems to me that more and more, in your writing, your heart is pouring out of the fleece sleeve … or perhaps seeping through the crack under the Iron Door. ~wink~
Keep at it.
P.S. — I am so very excited about Grandpa showing up in this place. So excited.
2010/07/18 at 10:19 PM
And that, perhaps, will explain why my hair stands on end so often in this place…
2010/07/19 at 10:40 AM
I love this post because it reveals the heart of writing, not to please the readers, but ultimately to reveal the writer’s heart. It’s lovely that your grand-dad is 102 and guest-posting.
2010/07/18 at 10:52 PM
Jaycee, I’m learning that what readers want to see is that heart. Not that I always know what to do about that…
2010/07/19 at 10:41 AM
i like your posts
2010/07/18 at 11:17 PM
n. davis rosback, nAncy, I just like you.
2010/07/19 at 10:41 AM
Pingback: Follow Your Bliss
Lyla, I vaguely suspect that there isn’t much difference between writing and preaching. As a preacher and writer and pastor I have learned that writing and preaching and pastoring don’t always afford me the luxury of doing so “from the heart of what matters to me personally.” Sometimes it has to be about what matters to someone else, or what they desperately need. Sometimes our job is simply to try and figure out what matters to others, or even what ought to matter to others and to us. Perhaps even daring to think of what matters to God. I’m not talking about what matters to others in a marketing sense, or in the sense of pleasing what others want to hear, but not letting our heart get in the way of the hearts of others. Sometimes I finally get around to addressing a subject I have long avoided, and even feared, because it was uninteresting to me, or I worried that it would offend rather than bless. Or worse yet, require me to respond in ways I had long preferred to ignore. You may find your best stuff from behind your heart, from places from which your heart would rather shield you. Sometimes you must write from your gut, from your innards. Sometimes our mind and our heart reach the truth long before our core discerns it. Sometimes you may just have to write in order to find out what matters to you, and it may not at all be what you thought mattered. Let what matters find you, rather than seeking for it. Most important of all, sometimes what really matters, is that what really matters, really matters! Never let your heart and your mind and your gut get away with ignoring each other.
2010/07/19 at 3:09 PM
David, I really appreciate what you’ve said here. To some degree I’ve struggled with what I’ve said in this post, feeling a self-centered pull, writing about what matters to me, and you’ve helped put some words on that. I absolutely agree that in whatever avenue we’re operating out of, it’s often going to be about what matters to someone else, what they need, or as you so wisely point out, what matters to God.
And then at the same time, I look at at that and think that’s what makes my heart beat anyway. And so it comes full circle, and becomes the very thing I care about, the thing that matters to me. Because what matters most, what matters very very much, is what matters in the life of another, what matters in God’s view. And if I stay the course in that regard, what comes out, whether in writing or otherwise, will have my heart in it. I can’t imagine it not.
So thanks for that, you’ve truly helped me clarify that in my own heart and mind.
What you say here, Never let your heart and your mind and your gut get away with ignoring each other. I hate to give your ego a puff up,
but that might be the wisest thing I’ve heard in ages.
And, what I really appreciate about this is seeing a side of you, this depth, that one would expect is there but rather gets overlooked in the pun-festival that is our family together. To see this put out here, it’s a real gift, and I thank you for that. I do.
2010/07/19 at 5:21 PM