The Open Vein

Each week I write a motivational essay for my RWAOnline Group. This is a reprint from a post in January:

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

There's no getting around it. Writing is personal stuff. Though the people in your book are "just characters", it's your emotion, your heart that infuses the book with life. Heady stuff. Feelings are personal, private, intimate and here they are spilling all over the page, for everyone and their mother to read.

And speaking of mothers… We don't even want to think about when our mother or mother-in-law first reads that *a-hem* rather intimate scene *cough* where the heroine reaches down and… Oh MY!!

Yup… Personal stuff. It's deep, intimate, scary and oh-so-wonderful, this process of writing, that once we start we can't let go. Not now, not ever. It's not just that it's addictive (though it is), it's not just because it's fun (indubitably), it's certainly not simply because it's a thrill to accomplish the seeming impossible (which it is, without a doubt), it's because Writing is a Process of Self-Discovery.

With each page, each new scene, we somehow (without ever quite understanding how) learn just a little bit more about ourselves. As if the computer keys (or Bic pens) are somehow triggering a complicated code that unlocks the door to the greatest mystery within our hearts. The greatest beauty is knowing that as we discover the perfect formula that throws open that door, we cast a light on the heart of every reader who chances upon our novel as well.

Again, heady stuff…

So let's sally forth, the Intrepid Explorers, the Daring Adventurers, the oh-SO-Persistent Writers who will finish each and every book.

Remember… We Are WRITERS!