Writer’s Rant
4/4/24
Tugging at the Heart
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” (Robert Frost) OK, I admit it. Sometimes I can show emotion. I was surprised by the emotions I sometimes felt while writing my novel RUNNING SHOES. I wanted my story to be one that tugged at the emotions of my readers and as I wrote, I found it tugged at my own. I pondered this and discovered that it was the realism of the moment that pulled me in. When my main character experienced any kind of stress and anxiety, he resorted to running. I can relate to that. When he experienced tragedy and despair and sought solace, my mood would change and reflect that of my character. When he first found and then lost love, and then found it again, I was on that roller coaster ride of highs and lows along with him. Upon further reflection, all of these reactions were either a direct result of my own life experiences or a direct contradiction to having any familiarity with them. As a writer, I have found that my own emotional nuances play an important part as I tell my story. While it’s a very personal thing, I think a reader has to have some semblance of that same emotion in order to understand what the main character of the story is going through and to be truly engaged in the story. I hope there are as many tears and surprises for the reader as there were for the writer. 4/4/24
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