Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. —William Wordsworth
Why Is Writing So Emotional?
When I founded Bookflow, I wanted to create a tool that would help with not only with the technical aspects of writing, but that would help support the emotional challenges of writing as well. Because, let’s face it, writing is emotional. Inspiration and writer’s block are two emotional states that come and go like weather. In the end, we can’t force ourselves to feel a certain way at a given time. But we can do things that help improve our motivation and that keep us on track in our work...even when our emotions are getting in our way.
Fossils
Writing teaches us to capture and explore those thoughts so that we can return to them at any time.
Writing–like all artmaking—is the fossil record of our relationship with our own thoughts and emotions. Meditation teaches us to separate from and observe our thoughts. Writing teaches us to capture and explore those thoughts so that we can return to them at any time. And sometimes those thoughts are challenging or even painful. But, in the end, meditation and writing offer the same lesson: These thoughts, and the emotions associated with them, are not us. We can’t always change them, but they do not need to control our actions or decisions.
It’s Okay
One reminder I often offer to writers (including myself) is that we are not our work. Sometimes the work is going well. Sometimes it isn’t. This writing is just a reflection of the working of your mind at a single moment. And we can always change our minds, refine our thoughts, and express the images in our imagination more clearly. Writing is and should be emotional. Remembering and accepting that is key to the work itself.
