I am not the only person in the world who thinks writing takes more heart than anything. I’ve personally known a few editors. One was an editor for a large and well-known major book publisher in NY. He was the first person who ever told me that he would prefer receiving a potential book from someone who wrote from the heart, but whose writing needed some editing than a submission that was perfectly constructed but lacked that “oomph” or spark of one writing from the heart. Construction can be learned, yes. Or one can pay an editor before submitting. (Now-a-days editors don’t like having to do that as much as this man when he was editor.)
Another editor I knew worked at a mid-sized newspaper. He also believed that heart was more important than construction. He hired journalism majors right out of college to be reporters. But for editing positions, he preferred persons who were not journalism or English majors, but, rather, persons with a passion for writing.
After writing a series of freelance columns for this editor, he offered me the job of editorial assistant and promoted me to community news editor in just a few months. Some of the younger reporters were angry, knowing that my college education was in business and marketing and not in writing.
I once asked, “Why did you make me an editor, boss?” He told me that journalism majors do fine as reporters because they don’t have to think, really. He said that eventually he expected that computers would write news stories. People would enter facts, and computer programs would create the stories. But he insisted that each of his editors come from outside the writing/journalism world and just had a passion for writing and a heart. “That,” he said, “cannot be taught.”
I also wrote for a local weekly newspaper. The editor was one of my good friends. She refused, also, to hire either journalism or English majors. They argued with her about what could and couldn’t or should and shouldn’t be included in a newspaper. They were obviously all wrong, since she won award after award for her newspaper. To her, passion and heart were more important than anything. Construction could be fixed or taught.
Someone recently told me that a good writer can write without thinking. Perhaps, but that’s where the heart comes in, I think. I can look at my own writings, even years after writing them, and know which ones were written with such a strong connection from my brain to my fingers that after completion and reading, even I was surprised. And I can look at others and know that I struggled because that brain to finger connection just wasn’t there.
I can also find writers here and everywhere who have a special spark that says, “I’m a writer.” Frankly, most writers really know if that’s them. They may not say so, but they know.
This person with whom I argued, spoke of two kinds of writers – those who had been to school to learn how to write and the “idiots” who write because they think they can or should, but who have no formal education beyond high school.
I would never use that word about anyone, and we totally disagreed about what made a writer and what did not. To me the “bad” writers were often those who actually know how to string words together, but whose resulting work was not exciting.
That writing is like a brand new concrete block building. It’s sturdy, sure, but not very attractive. The writer who has been called to write, whose passion is writing, whose heart and soul is all about writing is more like an old mansion. Yes, there may be a cracked window and the porch might creak, but the house has character.
So it is with writers and writing. Character and passion are much more important, to me than perfect construction.
We are not all meant to write. But neither are we all meant to teach, to be automobile mechanics, or do do any other job. But those who feel compelled to write are probably supposed to do so. Even if – today – they are still learning the ins and outs of proper grammar.
A true writer cannot fake having heart. Well, perhaps he can for some persons. But people who read as much as I do, that’s doubtful. Until my companion, fibromyalgia, came to be with me, I wrote for two to three hours a day and read at least an hour a day as well (for over 40 years). It’s easy to spot fakes.
It’s unfair to the public and to writers themselves when they are forced to churn out book after book after book every six to twelve months. Often, an author’s first book – full of heart and passion – is his/her best. The second is almost as good. The third and beyond are only as good if they are allowed to take 2-3 years to write them, as they did with their first book. If not, they begin to sound like “fast food” writing. That, any idiot (my debator’s word) can do. But not a person with heart.
I told the person with whom I debated about what makes a writer that we would have to agree to disagree about some things. He, after all, insisted that only those “writers” who have been to school for years should feel qualified to be writers. He considered everyone else just participating in a hobby, and not worthy of his time to read their works of heart. That’s his loss. He will deprive himself of some excellent reading material because he is overly concerned about the writer’s credentials.
That we disagreed is not a problem to me. The world would be a horrible place if were all cookie-cutter people. And that goes for readers and writers and every other kind of person in between.
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I have said for years: “I don’t think true writers ever write anything bad, not if we allow the heart and soul to be the writer of our words.” ~ Marilyn Mackenzie
“If you dream of being a writer, you already are one! The words are merely being held prisoner in your mind. Release them!” Marilyn Mackenzie
And some quotes about writing from more famous people:
“Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn’t matter.” ~ Edward Albee
“A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.” ~ Charles Peguy
“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.” ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
Marilyn Mackenzie has been writing about home, family, faith and nature for over 40 years. She is an author on http://www.Writing.com which is a site for Creative Writers. Her portfolio can be found at http://www.kenzie.writing.com
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