Writing and the Honest Heart

Posted by Emily M. | December 8, 2008 | 10 Comments

Something to think about while you revise your contest essays:

One of the first things I look for when evaluating an essay is its truth level. By this I mean, how honest is the core issue of the essay? Does the writer give it to me raw, in a way that shows me her pain/poignant funny moment, instead of telling it to me? Does she also give the essay’s healing and resolution their own show-don’t-tell moments?

Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:

From “I Look Like My Sister,” published in Spring 2008: Roots and Branches, by Lisa Rumsey Harris (and Lisa won our essay contest in 2006 with “Honor in the Ordinary”):

I found out too, that her choices were strong and selfless choices—choices that I value now, choices that I have made myself. I have gone through financial despair with my husband. I’ve lived in tiny apartments wherein you decorate the bathroom in green to camouflage the mold. I’ve turned down important jobs to stay home with my children. And one day after my Sasha was born, I locked myself in the bathroom, away from my bewildered three-year-old, away from the screaming baby, and I sat in the tub, my face in my hands, and cried.

Read that italicized sentence again. It’s so honest. She shares this moment of pain, which is also an experience that helps her identify with her sister’s mothering struggles. She doesn’t gloss over it. She shows it in a scene, and she gives us just enough detail to allow us to empathize, without wallowing in it.

That there is honest writing. An honest heart explores the pain (from our fabulous editor Brittney Carman: “If it hurts when you pick at it, dig deeper.”) and also sees beyond it..

Wallowing/martyrdom and glossing are the two enemies to writing with a naked heart. When writers wallow, they explore the messiness of the issue more than it warrants. Misery, a good dose of self-justification, little healing, and therefore little truth. Don’t be a martyr when you write.

But. Don’t be a glosser either. Don’t fall into the trap of telling the most important part of your essay, the whole reason you wrote it, instead of showing it to us. What if Lisa Rumsey Harris had written “I had a really hard time as a young mother, including many moments where I felt alone” instead of “I locked myself in the bathroom… and I sat in the tub… and cried.”

If she had written “I had a really hard time,” she would have spared herself some pain. It was probably not easy to relive the bathroom crying episode. But she would have glossed over the truth, and the essay would not have been as powerful. Her willingness to have an open heart, to bare herself for us, made this essay strong.

Let me give you another great example, from “Keeping Attendance,” by Julie Ransom, co-winner of our 2007 essay contest:

I hit a pool of melted snow. My crutches slide out in opposite directions, clattering loudly across the wood floor. I fall to my knees—not an inappropriate pose if I were, say, lighting a prayer candle near a reliquary in a Gothic cathedral, but a bit dramatic for a crowded Mormon meetinghouse. A hundred and fifty heads, including that of the organist, turn to see what all the noise is about. They are my friends, my brothers and sisters, and their concern and sympathy flow back at me like a tidal wave, but I am still humiliated. Humbled. I give them all a timid smile from my penitent position. So much for discreet.

I turn down many kind offers of assistance, crawl over to the nearest row of free chairs, and motion for my kids to join me. They bring my crutches from both sides of the room. We are barely settled after the sacrament when a feud breaks out over the crayons. Then the boys begin to squirm and complain about being bored. I am surrounded by trout on a boat deck. There is much arching and flopping—from chairs to floor to my knees to the floor again. I catch only a few phrases of a talk that, to be honest, holds no interest for me.

I have no choice but to ask myself a terrible question. It strikes me not with urgency but in a seeping flush of frustration and resignation. Why am I here? I do not ask because of a crisis of faith, or even because I feel picked on and impaired and am wishing for sackcloth and ashes to make my persecution complete. I mean, generally speaking, what is the point of our weekly attendance, our weekly battle? I am not at the verge of exiting the church (slowly, very slowly), and leaving my membership records at the door, never to return. I simply have what I feel to be a highly practical proposal: If my home is a temple, can we please, please just worship from there?

She’s got a funny, poignant scene going on, one we can all identify with: the desire to worship from home when it’s tough to be in church. She does get to the heart of the matter, though: she tells us honestly about the way she fell on her crutches, and about how humiliating that whole Sunday was. She doesn’t become a martyr from it, nor does she gloss over it. The heart of the essay is there, true and real.

So: go back to that essay you’re working on. In my last contest post, I talked about revising. This would be my very first recommendation as you revise your essay: evaluate the heart of it. Do you show us, in a vivid scene, what we need to know to empathize with your situation? Do you show us without wallowing or glossing? If you’re wondering about how to make the heart of your essay more clear, more powerful, here are a few more links to essays I think do a marvelous job at this:

“That Girl,” by Laura Hilton Craner
“Small and Simple Things,” by Brooke Benton
Elizabeth’s Quilt by Julie Donaldson
See Your Beauty, Feel Your Power by Angela Schulz

Category: Writing Workshop

Comments

10 Responses to “Writing and the Honest Heart”

Ginger
December 8th, 2008 @ 6:20 pm

Thank you so much for these mini tutorials. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge about writing with the rest of us. I am not entering the contest, but I have been toying with other types of writing, and this post has been extremely helpful, even for wanna-be writers of fiction.
If DH gets a contract he is trying for at the moment, I am all over that creative writing course BYU offers online. I have never taken creative writing… but I love reading all the past essay winners. I love all the blog posts here. You all have such an amazing way of making your words become images, and I love reading everything here!
cindy baldwin
December 8th, 2008 @ 11:40 pm

I have a question about the contest – theoretically, when would winning entries be published? If my essay has to do with Christmas will that rule it out? Thanks!
Emily M.
December 9th, 2008 @ 5:17 pm

Cindy, we have moved to two issues a year instead of three, and our Spring issue is in production right now, so I think the contest winners will appear in our Fall/Winter 2009 issue.

The contest is open-themed, however, You can write about anything you want, any holiday (even non-Fall/Winter ones). We do have themed issues, but we leave the field wide open for contest entries.

Thanks for asking (and if anyone else has questions, ask away).
Diane
December 9th, 2008 @ 8:00 pm

That’s why we keep coming back…for the honest and raw emotion in writing that you describe! Thanks to you and all for sharing your talents.
Lisa H
December 9th, 2008 @ 8:19 pm

Ah, Emily. Thank you for the kind words about my essay on a day when I had decided that writing might not be worth it. Incidentally, in this essay, it wasn’t as hard to write about my bathtub experience, as it was to write about walking in on my sister’s similar experience years earlier. We had never talked about that episode until it appeared in the essay.
Emily M.
December 9th, 2008 @ 8:22 pm

Thanks, Diane!

And Ginger–I answered Cindy’s question, but I neglected to tell you thanks for your kind words. Thank you! And also, just FYI, I wrote the first things I ever submitted to Segullah as assignments for that BYU creative writing class. It was so helpful to me to have deadlines and goals. I had never published anything before “Ultrasound” appeared here. So, go for it! If you aren’t planning on entering this year, start writing for next year. I am proof that you don’t have to have a lot of previous experience to learn to write with an honest heart.
Emily M.
December 9th, 2008 @ 8:30 pm

Lisa, you gotta be kidding! I love your writing (what I’ve read of it. Send more!).

Yes, it is always harder to write scenes like that with other people. I can see that. And you do it so well–this essay about your relationship with her is honest and real, and also kind and merciful. So well done.
cindy baldwin
December 9th, 2008 @ 10:51 pm

Thanks, Emily – that helps!
Blog Segullah : Post: Structure
December 19th, 2008 @ 8:02 am

[...] have a writing contest going on right now (Deadline December 31!). In my last post I talked about writing with an honest heart; I have to say that’s still the first thing I try for when I write, that non-wallowing, [...]
Blog Segullah : The Tinker Stage
December 26th, 2008 @ 7:04 pm

[...] here. And I have a few final ideas for you as you revise your contest essays. You’ve got the honest heart; you’ve structured the pieces of your story in a cohesive way. Here are some more things to [...]