I love reading old letters to the editor. There’s so much to glean from them. Especially if I’m coming from a completely different frame of reference in life.
I recently thumbed through my copy of Writer’s Digest’s “Legends of Literature” and found a whole section of letters from readers dating back to the early 1900s. Some were humorous, some serious, but Margaret’s really struck a cord with me.
“Truth is beauty,” she wrote, “and beauty is soft and sweet as well as mean and dirty. Good writers see both, not just one.”
As writers, we can’t shy away from the hard things. They’re part of the human experience and, as hard is it is to admit sometimes, some of the most beautiful things in life spring from some of the meanest and dirtiest experiences of life. For example, if it hadn’t been for the hard things King David faced, we would never have had the psalms that many of us turn to for comfort when life feels overwhelming or unbearable.
We may play with the setting, create fictional characters, and dream up incredible circumstances, but even the tallest tale carries inside of it a seed of truth waiting to be discovered by the reader.
So as you continue to write today, I hope you find beauty in being a truth-teller. Explore those hard things. Examine the sweet things. Take a good, long look at the whole picture.
And watch how it transforms your writing and your life!