By Leesa Ostrander
This post is in
honor of National Breast Cancer Month.
I want to ask
everyone, when you write do you find more gratification when you write for
something you believe in or have a passion for?
I ask because I
write marketing material. Sometimes it flows and other times it is like washing
the car with water from the Rio Grande.
Once I found out my
mom has breast cancer last week, the words flowed from me. I could see clarity
in why I was writing to encourage patients to pay attention to their health; a
direct opposite from the previous week.
I found it easier
to write and know my motive, then turn the thoughts into legible words.
Then I turned the
passion back to my WIP. This section may not fit in the whole work, but it felt
good to get it on paper.
Back to the
question, do you add your personal agenda’s to your WIP (hoping to omit
personal bias when writing technical writing)? Does your passion shine and your
readers take notice where you are coming from? How do you hone in this
talent?
Leesa,
ReplyDeleteHope your mother is ok.
I have also noticed that my writing is more meaningful, and, quite frankly, much better when I am passionate about my subject. It's not always easy to transfer that passion to fiction, though--at least for me.
When I was studying for my master's, the professors placed a lot of emphasis on adding the personal to your writing. Perhaps it is universal that we create better work when we feel a personal connection to it.
Thank you! Hope you love being home! Yet, it is focusing the passion that can be hard for me. What do you do to make it not sound eloquent?
DeleteLeesa, I also hope and pray that your mother will be okay. Yes, the words come much more easily when I am passionate about a subject, particularly if I am well informed. I write better copy when I am able to get the emotion into it and share that emotion with the potential customer.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, when I am writing academic papers for my psych classes, I have to take the personal feelings out of it and stick to the "facts." My professors don't care how I feel about the topic, they just want to know what the studies show...and that make it more difficult for me to write.
I look forward to writing some historical fiction where I will be able to do both!
hugs~
Kari, thank you. I loved writing research papers in school and the five-paragraph essay was my favorite. Yet, I am finding it hard. These days I write basic marketing and get tongue-tied with grammatical errors. I think huh?
DeleteI will be excited to see how your fiction includes the psychology aspect that hooks readers ;-)