Heart Work
“Layers,” I told my creative writing instructor. I enjoy writing something that goes deeper than the obvious surface, past the epidermis learned in human anatomy class, through the layered fabric of tissue, bone, and muscle; until, finally, you get to the beating heart—the soul of your work.
William George Jordan, in his book, “The Majesty of Calmness,” exemplifies this statement when he says, “We should not be merely an influence, we should be an inspiration. By our very presence we should be a tower of strength to the hungering human souls around us” (page 25).
Jordan is not speaking of writing here, but of life, a life willing to go past the surface. And according to Jordan each one of us can “float down the stream of life like icebergs, cold, reserved, unapproachable and self contained,” or we can choose to be like the “Gulf Stream, following [our] own course…undaunted and undismayed in the ocean of colder waters” (page 21).
Like people, writing can be cold and unyielding, even “unapproachable.” A writer can write all they want, but in the end, if the writer yields nothing but words, a mere skeleton of information, the reader feels nothing.
In the process of stating the facts, or simply remembering we must have a plot, some characters, some dialogue, and description we may forget what the reader really wants. A connection. The reader wants to feel something—anger, sadness, warmth—a spark of insight. Even if the reader merely wants to be entertained, we must, by our very words and the use of them, convince the reader that their time with us was well spent. To do this we must use words that evoke imagery and depth—take the writer on a journey if you will—to their very heart.
Jordan suggests in his writing various ways of moving to the heart. He uses words that spark thought, engender emotion and cause the reader to see something, usually something very ordinary, in a very extraordinary way.
Take for example the description of a ‘cold’ human being. Jordan is speaking here of someone’s cold heart, someone who “in their presence you involuntarily draw your wrap closer around you as you wonder who left the door open.” He reminds us that these “refrigerated human beings have a most depressing influence on all those who fall under the spell of their radiated chilliness” (page 21). Jordan doesn’t simply tell us, some people are depressed. They are cold and unfeeling. They stand unapproachable. He allows us to see and feel—experience, what he truly believes.
Though Jordan is speaking here about the way in which someone presents himself to the world, he uses the feeling of an open door to take you deeper into his words. Using the words “refrigerated human beings” takes you even further into the cold, where the freezer never sleeps.
Can a person walk “through life as if each day were a new big funeral” (page 21)? Be so fake “it seems their smile must be connected with some electric button concealed in their clothes” (page 22)? How does Jordan’s choice of words make you feel? What do you see when you read them? If Jordan had merely mentioned some people were depressing, or that they were fake, or some other such word, without taking us on a journey to the heart, would his words have the same impact? Or would they be merely, words?
Consider these additional words and phrases by Jordan:
“The Sphinx is not a true type of calmness—petrification is not calmness” (page 7), “Hurry is a phantom of paradoxes” (page 15), “[It] is the royal road to nervous prostration” (page 17; italics added).
How about these words on a different subject?
“The rocky way may prove safer than the slippery path of smoothness” (page 41), “…pleasure is a note, happiness is a symphony” (page 57), and “a cynic is a man who is morally near-sighted, and brags about it. He sees the evil in his own heart and thinks he sees the world. He lets a mote in his eye eclipse the sun” (page 58; italics added).
I want to be a better writer. If I am dissatisfied by any means it is time to take my words past epidermis to that beating heart of meaning. How do I do this?
Practice. Faith. Endurance. Not giving up when someone I admire tells me my words stink. Those I truly admire will tell me this truth I hate to hear but need to hear anyway. They will tell me I don’t have enough description here, or that I am unclear there. I have been told my paragraphs are too short, my punctuation leaves them wondering about my true intent, and that they ‘want to know more.’
Seeing past the epidermis of anything requires effort. In writing, seeing means looking beyond the trees, but still allowing the bark to travel through your fingers along your way through the forest. This takes effort. And the way I see it, only when we have the courage to look up and out, will we be able to write anything worthy of the written word.
Prayer is a mighty factor in what I write—in the way I write. So is meditation, a form of prayer. So are those quiet moments, never given at random, and often experienced as an un-planned event. I must not only make time to write but to hear. In this writing state, I think less, I hear more. God is not far. And I breathe in the words he would give me.
“The path of truth, higher living, truer development in every phase of life, is never shut from the individual,” says Jordan, and here is the key, “until he closes it himself. Let man feel this, believe it and make his faith a real and living factor in his life and there are no limits to his progress…”(page 51, italics added).
A good friend of mine, one I rarely see anymore but think of often, gave me a copy of the book from which this essay comes. The book is no longer in print. She took each page and made a copy for me, suggesting I highlight those words that reached into my heart. The yellow highlighting blares from every page, and as I re-read the book in preparation for this essay I realized the same things apply. After some 10-15 years, the words that spoke to me then, still do.
For whatever years of writing Jordan must have been writing to produce a book that clearly allows me to travel beyond the obvious exterior to the fascinating heart of a writer, I am inspired. I want to pick up my pen, tap those computer keys, and never forget what truly matters.
