How Our Real Life Emotional Experiences Can Impact Our Writing Successes
Recently, my life was rocked. I don't want to say love in the time of Covid-19, but it happened for me. I can't say it was wise, but life is weird. What more can I say?
The thing about love is that it is distracting. For someone who falls in love easily, like me, I almost think it catches me off guard. Like I push it away and don't think about it until someone says, "Boo!" But once it's voiced, all bets are off.
I found out some horrible things about a recent love. I won't go into details, but it is enough to say that separation was unavoidable. I am sad.
He provided me with a comfort during this time of isolation. A chance to think of the future and look forward to the days when we'd be free to meet up again and enjoy in-person company. His presence was welcome if only for that.
But now he is gone. I am back in my lonely present. Life must move on.
I come to you today to speak about experience. Though I am sad now, I don't regret past actions. I don't regret opening my heart up to someone new. And above all, I do not, for one moment, regret loving.
As an author, I find that life and experience are the very things that provide me with inspiration. Knowing that I have this beautiful opportunity to feel both joyous love and excruciating pain in the same breath is so very human. Something unique to this species as we understand it.
If you've never known such deep and impactful emotions, I pray you get even a fleeting chance to become acquainted. My own heartbreak is a small and engulfing reminder that I am alive.
This brings me back to writing. Of all the forms of expression, I believe words are the most unique to us. With millions of words throughout time and society, we were able to create something that could be understood, translated, and cultivate emotion within anyone who could read.
But more than that, I love how when I write, I can process things and feel emotions myself. I love that I can pick up a pen and let everything flow through me and onto the page. It is cathartic in so many ways.
Call it intuition, but I believe that is the beauty of writing, too. I can use these roiling emotions to effect my readers in the future. Make them fall in love with my characters and then cause things to fall apart. Create happy endings or sad ones. Create an ideal life that anyone would adore.
I believe I have a decent scope of love because my family had to put one of our dogs to sleep at the end of February. It was a horrible thing. I'd never experienced anything like that before, and I hope desperately that we won't have to do that to our one remaining dog when it comes to her time.
Beyond the fact that it was heartbreakingly awful, my experience with Cooper's passing brought up something else. Something I'd forgotten.
Life is important. Death requires you to look at what's going on around you and really see it. Grief is simply the combination of regret and love. What we never expressed in life comes out when we don't have a chance to express it again.
This perspective has afforded me many things in the past month and a half, but it's mostly reminded me not to waste my emotions. If I feel them, I express them. If I am sad, I cry. If I get excited, I jump around and dance. If I fall in love, I allow for possibilities.
As a reminder to all of you, I hope this helps you see that even in the worst situations, there is something to be gained. Life is too short to regret even a moment. Feel everything because it deserves your attention. Write everything because others want to know they are not alone.
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Lexi Mohney is an award-winning, self published author and a book coach living in Ann Arbor, MI. Throughout her writing and coaching career, she's lived by the motto of courage, and worked with her own coaches, groups, and support system to see her Big Audacious Dreams come true so that she can help others achieve success, too. Her first published piece, Carnal Knowledge, won an award at the 7th Annual Bisexual Book Awards in NYC on June 1, 2019. She is in the process of querying agents for her latest novel, Soulkind, which is the first in the Soul Hunter Series. Contact her through her website or find her on social media with any questions.