No pain, no gain, no compassion, did the book you read make you feel, did it create a connection? Did you feel the fear, pain, joy, laughter, hope, and love or perhaps just one, maybe two of these emotional triggers through the characters and events in your book?
‘In a dark time, the eye begins to see’ ~ Theodore Roethke
Some of the greatest artistic expressions emanated from the seat of pain, ‘a dark time’. Sylvia Plath’s Ariel comes to mind, her suite of poems on life and pain.
Emotion brings art to life, inviting the beholder to stop, listen, and absorb, to feel the pulse of the writer’s being.
In a dark time, challenges and struggles turn the eye and ear inward. Stop… still yourself from thought and action – listen and connect to your internal landscape. When writing grows from such a place, compassion is born through created events and characters.
Emotion, regardless of whether it’s negative or positive, draws us in, more so when love and understanding emerge through the connection. We are emotional beings. While Descartes said, ‘I think therefore I am’ (Cogito, ergo, sum) – it can be said, ‘I feel, therefore, I connect’ or ‘I feel, therefore, I understand, appreciate…’
Stories should build connections, to validate the reader by bringing characters and their challenges to life. When readers leave a review on the connections the writer’s prose created for them, this provides valuable feedback and acknowledgment.
Here’s an extract from my latest novel, Souls of Her Daughters when the realization of where her life is at, comes crashing down on the protagonist… too much has happened, the past and present collide…
Grace walked around the hospital grounds, confused, lost in thought on the uncertainty of life. Visions of what her mother would have done came to mind. She walked to her car, sat back in the seat and sobbed for all she had lost in her life, and that poor Mrs. Beresford lay dead for the better part of a day, waiting for someone to claim her – Grace understood the pain of loneliness.
Loss and loneliness are sadly, but realistically universal. With the protagonist feeling the emotional weight of both, in a single moment, empathy is elicited and might perhaps connect with the reader, offering solace that we essentially are not alone in what we feel.
Emotional connections whether through song, literary fiction or a life-size painting, draw us in by the intensity of the emotion expressed.
Alternately, there are light-hearted moments in the novel, to lift the weight of the struggles the protagonist and the women around her undergo. The blurb concludes, ‘A timeless tale of every woman’s story…’ Timeless on the struggles and celebrations of life, of women from different cultural contexts and professional backgrounds but nonetheless women with collaborative fighting spirits.
Tapping into the essence of our humanity through any art form, is a way forward, to capture the moment in its rawness, to allow us to walk away from the wars of the world, to look at the pleasure and beauty of life, to let the time of struggle pass. Appreciation and compassion are bred from challenges – how do you know the dark side, if you have not felt it? So too, characters’ lives should represent life through art to make fiction sing with timelessness.
Souls of Her Daughters captures the dark side of life, but the positive emotions swell in the relationship between mothers and daughters. Amidst tears, there is laughter, the reality of the experience of life. I hope you read this tale which will leave you with the message – never deter telling the truth, no matter how painful it might be.
I leave you with this timeless TED message from Susan David, that encapsulates the essence of Souls of Her Daughters, on embracing your emotions in its truth.
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