Make you feel things
There is a short list of writers whose writing makes my soul shiver or spark or ache. I wish I could bottle whatever it is they have - that starstuff that is more than story that makes the story beautiful and the words themselves come alive.
JK Rowling does that for me. So does blogger Sarah McCarry. Sometimes the stuff McCarry writes moves me until I'm drowning in my own saline and mucus, grabbing tissues at my desk and fervently praying no one comes by during my lunch break. And it's not because her prose is technically perfect (she has a penchant for run-on sentences, which I absolutely adore). It's because there is a raw-ness, a passion, an unashamed pleading for your ear and heart that pulls no punches.
JK winds me up into caring for her characters to the point when atrocities happen, my grieving is dangerously real.
Mary Doria Russell did the same. I cannot, in good heart, recommend her sci-fi, The Sparrow, because I was so literally torn apart by it and most likely anyone would be, yet I loved it for all the torturousness because it allowed me to feel the things that Dateline and violent blockbusters numb us from feeling.
I desperately want to be that kind of writer. The kind that entwines, embraces, and ultimately rips your heart to shreds, then pieces it back together. The kind that is something more than tight plot threads, impeccable technique, and sharp dialogue.
It cuts you like that one song that comes on the radio on that night when you're driving back from a faraway town where you just had your heart broken, while the rain crashes the windshield in the pinkish gold glare of the interstate, and you cry because the music kicks you breathless and leaves you no other choice.
It stirs like when you watched that final scene in The Warrior where the brothers have beaten each other to pieces and the elder crushes his little brother in his grip and tells him on the mat of the fighting ring he loves him and that everything's going to be ok, and you sob because you know what it's like to love someone and be hurt by them and hurt them back and desperately want everything to be ok.
I want to be the kind of writer that makes you feel the things we tell ourselves it's somehow not ok to feel.
JK Rowling does that for me. So does blogger Sarah McCarry. Sometimes the stuff McCarry writes moves me until I'm drowning in my own saline and mucus, grabbing tissues at my desk and fervently praying no one comes by during my lunch break. And it's not because her prose is technically perfect (she has a penchant for run-on sentences, which I absolutely adore). It's because there is a raw-ness, a passion, an unashamed pleading for your ear and heart that pulls no punches.
JK winds me up into caring for her characters to the point when atrocities happen, my grieving is dangerously real.
Mary Doria Russell did the same. I cannot, in good heart, recommend her sci-fi, The Sparrow, because I was so literally torn apart by it and most likely anyone would be, yet I loved it for all the torturousness because it allowed me to feel the things that Dateline and violent blockbusters numb us from feeling.
I desperately want to be that kind of writer. The kind that entwines, embraces, and ultimately rips your heart to shreds, then pieces it back together. The kind that is something more than tight plot threads, impeccable technique, and sharp dialogue.
It cuts you like that one song that comes on the radio on that night when you're driving back from a faraway town where you just had your heart broken, while the rain crashes the windshield in the pinkish gold glare of the interstate, and you cry because the music kicks you breathless and leaves you no other choice.
It stirs like when you watched that final scene in The Warrior where the brothers have beaten each other to pieces and the elder crushes his little brother in his grip and tells him on the mat of the fighting ring he loves him and that everything's going to be ok, and you sob because you know what it's like to love someone and be hurt by them and hurt them back and desperately want everything to be ok.
I want to be the kind of writer that makes you feel the things we tell ourselves it's somehow not ok to feel.
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