To truly connect with your readers, your writing has to be honest and from the depths of your being. Sweep aside that surface emotional drivel. Dig beneath the glib intellectualism meant to make you sound clever. Root out the core of your subject that picks up your pulse, makes you feel gritty or makes you want to cry from the suffering or the rapture. Pull it up and touch its palpable substance. Examine it from as many angles as you need to feel it. Then get it on paper and work it until your feeling jumps off the page.
I wish to share some tips on this topic that were written for addicted2success.com by Tim Denning. These excerpts strike a chord with the essence of my message. You can find the full article on that website under the title, “How To Write From The Heart: You’ve Got The Words To Change A Nation.” Here are the highlights, in my opinion.
“Write when you’re full of emotion
“The easiest way to write from the heart is when you’re having a day or period of time when you are full of emotion. For me, this can either be a really sad state, or a point in time when I am experiencing the phenomena known as “flow.”
“In deep emotional states, words flow out of you and are naturally tainted with emotion from your heart. Writing can be a great way to release negative emotions or multiply positive emotions. In these writing states, you should aim to eliminate perfection and not worry about spelling or what you’re writing.
“The key for me has been to just let the words flow out of me and then go back and edit them later – that’s how you capture raw emotion. The rawer the emotion is in your writing; the more heartfelt the words on the page will be to your reader. Practice this enough and you will have a large audience.
“Concentrate on passion filled topics
“To write from the heart requires you to write about something you’re passionate about. Your heart, your passion, and your emotions are very closely linked to each other. For me, I find writing about entrepreneurship and personal development is the best way for me to write from the heart.
“The reason these two fields help me write from the heart is because they are deeply personal in their own individual ways. Entrepreneurship translates for me to family, success, money won and money lost, pain, pleasure, etc.
“Crank up the vulnerability
“If you want to not only write from the heart but change your nation at the same time then, your writing needs to be 100% vulnerable. Why? The reason is because so much of the world is based on hype and things that are not real. When you are vulnerable, you naturally write from the heart.
“Being vulnerable in writing and in life is not very common. People listen when you’re vulnerable, and you speak what you believe to be the truth. Vulnerability can create immense power, and it’s that power that you can use to change your nation.
“I have demonstrated this one quite a few times on our site when I have spoken about my health issues, my mortality, the anxiety I used to suffer, and my imperfections as illustrated by others. Each time I am vulnerable I am writing from the heart with the goal of helping others. I would love you to try this approach in your own life and watch the success come flooding in like a tidal wave.
“Include inspiration as much as possible
“When you endeavor to include inspiration in some form in your writing, you automatically write from the heart. The way you go even further is you include action points after the inspirational points in your writing.
“The reason for this is that the impact people will get from your inspirational points will not be reached to the maximum if you don’t write in some action points. Inspiration is meaningless without action that follows. Inspiration almost always leads to positive change, and I think that’s what everyone should aim for.
‘In the end, what will cause your writing to change a nation will be how much you can inspire and motivate everyone that reads your message’ – Tim Denning”
A good drill to get you started could be to write an essay just for yourself about a time of great difficulty or heavy emotion. Get into full detail about it and give yourself over fully to putting the incident into words. This can give you a true idea of how it feels to write from the heart. Strive to make every word count. Be as a lovesick poet, wearing your heart on your quill.
