Fiction Writing: The Passionate Journey. Blog of Writing Coach, Emily Hanlon

The Multi-Faceted Fiction Writer: Who Is Writing Your Stories?

Who is writing your stories? How intimately do you know that part of you?

Do you trust yourself to write in total freedom or are you afraid of exposing yourself? To whom? Mother? Father? Child? God? Self?

Have you met any new parts of yourself on your writing journey? Do you delight in these parts? Take them on a walk? Out for coffee, tea, wine or a beer? You might be surprised...

The Power of the Dark for the Fiction Writer

I sent my Soul through the Invisible

And by and by my Soul returned to me

And answer’d ‘I myself am Heav’n and Hell.’
—Omar Khayyam, Sufi poet

The Shadowland of the human psyche is grist for the writer's mill.
As the poem by Omar Khayyam suggests, our power as human beings comes from the blending of the light and dark, the gentle and powerful. Power can be used to create or destroy. Destruction can be seen as positive or negative. Darkness can be terrifying or magnificent.

Your Inner Writer knows that creating is a constant dance between heaven and hell, yin and yang, intuitive and rational, head and gut and heart, and in that dance there is no right and wrong, no like and dislike; there is simply being and dancing the passionate dance. It is this shadow world of the human psyche that becomes the grist for the artist’s mill.

The Task of the Artist Is to Bring the Dark into the Light