The Quiet Within

It is often said that good writing comes from a writer's pain and anger, and often it does. But I would submit that good writing comes mostly from a quiet place within where the fury has stopped. Yes, we need passion and raw emotion to write well, and that passion and emotion come from our own experiences. But if we write while we're still angry or still obsessed with whatever harmed us, we're not yet thinking clearly enough about it to have a sound perspective, and so our writing suffers. Readers know the difference between a rant and a resolve. They can sense if we're level-headed and reasonable or still caught up in the storm of our emotions. They know if we've reached any peace or wisdom about an issue; and they need us to be in that place because they look to us for the answers. Readers aren't so much interested in how angry or indignant we are as they are interested in how enlightened we have become, how we've grown from the experience. It's in reaching this quiet place of acceptance within that we are able to offer the most to our readers. So it's important that we don't write too soon about something we haven't yet fully processed, because it will show in our writing and it will frustrate our readers. Tempering passion and emotion with careful understanding will make us better people and better writers.