Writing from the Heart

I haven't blogged for months now, and I am disappointed in myself for doing so.  I could use the excuse of how busy I have been, but I would just be making excuses.  I didn't start writing a blog to get famous, or share my Pinterest recipe stories, but to give myself a way to keep writing.  So much of my writing lately has either been rushed, or heavily stilted toward what I think people want to hear, rather than me just writing from my heart.  Last weekend, at the urging of my parents, I cranked out the last essay that I had to do for a college scholarship.  It sounded a lot like others that I had done, even though the prompt was pretty different.  I was writing what I thought that everyone would want to hear.

Nothing that I wrote was untrue, but it didn't feel like me.  That's what my dad told me when he read my essay.  He said that he "couldn't hear my voice" in it at all.  My initial reaction was anger - "What?! I just did what you told me to do and wrote the paper! Now I have to write a different one?!".  Then, about 2 seconds later, I became worried - "But that means I'll have to be writing it during the week! When will I possibly find time for that? How am I going to find a whole new angle to write from? I'm never going to go to college!!!!!....." and so forth.  It wasn't until I took a nice deep breath and considered the prompt again that it finally hit me: I did have another idea.

The essay prompt was a poem entitled The Summer's Day by Mary Oliver.  Not trying to look for how I could put in my accomplishments or what an admissions counselor would be looking for, I realized that the poem put a very vivid image in my head.  I waited until this morning to just sit down and write about it.  I just took that image from my head and put it on paper.  Of course I had to tie it into what I actually wanted to do with my life, but even though I made much the same points, this paper was completely different from it's predecessor.  What I wrote had come from my heart.  Of course it took my head to form the sentences and find the proper words, but I was conveying my emotions and my dreams, rather than just my ideas.

Writing should be about the heart.  Oh, I know that there will be plenty of projects and formal papers to write in the course of my education, but that shouldn't be all writing is.  Writing is art, as fluid and creative as paint or imagination.  I never want to lose that dreamy quality of being able to write my dreams and wishes straight from my heart.