"Write from your heart" wrote my friend. Write about those things you are passionate about and you're onto a winner! Your writing will flow. Write from your heart, the good and the bad, and you will find the cure to writer's block - that fearsome, stultifying condition that terrorises all professional writers as they watch the words that routinely drip from their pens like liquid gold solidify into clumsy lumps of unyielding rock, like the petrified objects at Mother Shipton's well.
"Friends of mine are suffering from writer's block" wrote my friend ominously. "You know who you are and your names begin with J."
"Is it I?" I panic instinctively, feeling like some Judas who has betrayed his master for thirty pieces of silver. Do I write from the heart? An interesting question and the honest answer is probably both yes and no. What are my passions in life? A piece of writing I read out at my writers circle elicited a response which showed that, unwittingly, I had exposed a piece of my heart. Following a reading of an article I wrote concerning my annual 'escape to the country' as I like to think of my summer holiday, this time to an idyllic spot on the coast of Wales, there was a moment's silence. Then my impassioned outburst about the impact of this rural seaside experience and the subsequent depression I felt at returning to my city home and routine, provoked an exclamation from the other end of the table where we were gathered: "oh, but when you retire, the two of you" (meaning myself and my husband) "must buy a little cottage in the country and grow vegetables!" Exactly! Did I betray my heart so obviously? Apparently so.
One of my passions - the outdoor life, the countryside, nature, the sea, the birds and the butterflies... I write easily about such things. Another is rooted in location - places I have known and loved that have become a part of me. There are others, like the value of human life, the plight of the homeless, the need for tolerance and sensitivity, the embracing of diversity and a 101 ideals that I uphold but do not always succeed in achieving. And it's true, when I write about these things the words flow and the gentle humour which also an intrinsic part of my view on life comes into its own.
But my heart embraces other things too. I have a gentle husband and a generous daughter, the loves of my life. Do I write about them? No, rarely. But they occupy a sizeable place in my heart. I am a very private person, it seems, and what I love most in life remains locked away in my heart. To write from the heart about them might well release a flood of golden words, but some things are more precious even than words to me. SoI will guard these things jealously in my heart and go back to writing about those other things. I hope you will forgive me. I am no harlequin or clown, dressed in coloured patchwork and covered with hearts. I am not one who wears my heart on my sleeve all the time - at least not in my writing.
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