The Excellence of Heartbreak

Oscar Wilde said, "The heart was made to be broken." Well, I can attest to that, especially lately. However, it is this same heartache that gives the writer the experience to be able to write. Writers being of artistic temperament often seem to experience life through hardships. How they deal with those hardships is often to give it meaning by writing it down, putting it into a story, attaching it to a character. Writer's learn their craft by practicing at life and experiencing both highs and lows in all events.

I recently finished chapter twenty five and am about half way through chapter twenty six. Emotion is a tricky thing. When you are feeling happy sometimes you become less productive than when you are experiencing loss and extreme sorrow. Creativity finds its outlet for happiness by releasing the thoughts of the lows it seems sometimes easier because it wants to hold on and cherish the highs. But, when the good times are memories and the difficult times are the present one way to get through the pain is with creativity.  Writing is the outlet for which writers can heal.

I don't know if Oscar Wilde was correct that hearts were made to be broken because it seems a worldly imbalance to think a heart needs to be broken to grow and experience and learn and become stronger. Yet, that does appear the way of the world. In chapter twenty five one of the main characters is learning the lesson on heartache. She comes across the other side of it ready for action but it made the chapter easier to get through once I could place my pen on the page and write away my own feelings of loss at the time.

Often writing the intensely emotional scenes are just that, intensely emotional. The writer and the characters have very symbiotic relationships. The characters are real for the writer and the author becomes a therapist for them and in sequentially for themselves. I do not advocate seeking out heartbreak in order to be a better writer by any means. However, when already immersed in emotions in your own physical world it is easier to escape and experience the emotions within the imaginary world.  Placing those emotions on a character who seems real to you releases the intensity and instead allows the creativity to set in.  In conjunction, the character and their motivations and their storyline has an air of authenticity about it. 

Writing intense emotions can work the other way though as well. When the character is experiencing a key moment in the story with deeply personal undertones those emotions can transfer to the writer as well.  Often this comes in the form of then producing a "block" in the creativity as the writer is sorting through emotions and trying to guarantee validity in the storyline and the emotional force of a scene.  I have discussed this writer's block in the past and have greatly experienced it as I maneuver my way around these end chapters and the climax of the story.

For many writers, including this one, writing becomes a therapist, a friend, a transference, an intermediary and a savior in a sense.  So, Mr. Wilde, yes, the heart may have indeed been made to be broken but I take heart in another author's words about writing as a therapeutic tool, and an author who understood both personally and professionally the strength emotions can have over a person, Sylvia Plath.  She said, "Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated.  But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorry." 

I may be a bit beaten and defeated, weary of the battle, but I am dragging myself home and finding beauty in rediscovering my characters, my story, my own self.