The Ultimate Goal of a Writer
“I can’t write to please everyone, but someone, somewhere will be touched if I put my heart into it,” so said Sara Winters. No one enjoys a empty or calculated piece of writing.
Readers can detect whether the words before them comes from a natural flow of talents or from a writer’s brain put on the lemon squeezer. Even though coming up with a topic or plot requires the use of a person’s head, he should also make his creation meaningful by putting his heart into it. Putting the heart into a person’s writing makes it alive, instead of one bland word after another. If a person writes creatively on what he knows and believes, he has achieved the ultimate goal of a writer—writing from the heart. Writer creating a story or an essay should try to write what they know.
Everyday life and favorite things provide a writer with easier topics than something distant and fanciful. Once, when I wrote a short story, I stayed away from fantasy settings and Tolkienean creatures, and sticked with a real kidnap story that happened to my Grandfather. With most of the facts in place, I did not need to construct a fictional world or describe mythical creatures, but could fully develop my characters, and put more emotion into the story. Writing about what a person likes can also evoke his strong feelings. For example, if someone enjoys skiing, he will probably respond enthusiastically to composing an essay on skiing. Most likely, he will not turn in a half-hearted paper that really has no purpose or value.
All in all, taking real-life events or something the writer loves can assist him in filling the paper with feeling. In order to make his writing touching, a writer must try to make it unique. Instead of copying others, an author needs to use his creativity. One very famous Chinese writer remarked, “if you feel like you’ve seen this [a thought] before, don’t even put it down on paper, because it won’t be original.” Even though beginner-writers need their own paragons to imitate, they should develop their own writing style in order to stand out.
For instance, I always used a formula for my essays. Then I would make a list of sentences that I needed to write, and plug in all the information into the list. Therefore, my essays lacked any real emotional appeal and reeked of factory-made smell. To sum up, a writer without creativity can only produce articles without emotion. Not only should writers express their thoughts creatively, but they also need to write what they really believe. Writing down their genuine thoughts, whether on little things or great, helps authors to communicate their ideas much more earnestly.
For example, when I wrote a paragraph for an English assignment, I chose as my topic the negative effect of caffeine on teenagers. Next morning, I, the hypocritical writer, indulged myself in a hot, heavenly cup of coffee. I totally did not believe in the negative effects my paragraph claimed coffee would have on me, bringing into existence another lamely done, emotionless paragraph. In order to write meaningful essays or stories, a person needs to either believe in what he writes, or not write at all. To recapitulate, when a writer bestows his work with true emotion, readers notice and appreciate.
What a author really cares about will at least reach some readers if the writer speaks his mind in a straightforward, moving tone. However, faking an emotional appeal with many strong adjectives, verbs, and nouns will only make the readers wince at that obvious void created by an either ignorant or indifferent writer. Does not everyone with an empty stomach welcome a solid piece of pie more than a hollow dainty dessert? In the same way, a reader wants quality work, not frills and furbelows.
