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“Fiction isn’t written to inform but to find out”


Many of us keep journals or write poems or songs that we never share with anyone. 


Well that's the idea behind this quote.


Writers write to make sense of the world we see. Not necessarily to inform others, but to take a look at this thing we call the human condition and figure out what it means to be human. 


All fiction is in a sense autobiographical although the character and the writer may not be anything alike. 

It's the emotional honesty of the writing that both share. 

And that's why many of us give up on our writing. Because when we write, we often face what we fear most and it takes courage to find our voice. In the midst of that terror.

But we must find the courage to tell ourselves that we have something worth saying, and that we’re worthy of being heard.

That we’re not going to back down when we face the demon on the page that makes us deal with trauma we haven’t quite processed yet.


I once read that it's the writer’s job not to look away. When we see the ugliness of life, we have to move in closer. Close enough to touch it, feel it, taste it. Everyone  else looks away, but we sit right down next to it with our pen and pad and describe for others what we see. We do the same with things of life that are painfully beautiful, too. So beautiful that it makes us want to weep, but we never look away. 

It's that person who I'm speaking to today. That one inside of you that is speaking quietly and timidly. Too afraid to speak above a murmur. It's that voice that is uniquely and divinely yours that wants to be heard. 

It's your voice --your story--that only you can tell and that's what today is about. 


 A Tibetan Buddhist master  once said "we must continue to open in the face of a tremendous opposition. No one is encouraging us to open yet still we must peel away the layers of the heart."

You must open up your heart and that's where your voice is. 

Trust your heart.

Trust your voice.


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Unknown member
Jan 18

Everyone should read this.

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