Emotional Writing

Writing is an emotional journey. Yes, this is a corny statement, but sometimes corny is the best way to convey a message. Writing — good writing — has to come from a meaningful place, otherwise it’s fluff and will lack the transparency, truthfulness and honesty that is required for readers to relate to whatever it is you’re writing.

Think of keeping a journal. People don’t write their mundane daily tasks down in a journal (I woke up, got coffee, read the paper, fed the dog, went to work and came home). People write the highlights, they write the things that stood out in their day.

Here’s my point, we shouldn’t write something just because somebody said we should. Part of our job as PR professionals is to tell the client, our company or organization that “it isn’t newsworthy.” Mindless writing creates fluff in the messages and frustration in readers that wears them down to point that they stop making the effort to define between the two. We wear our own audience down and cause the very problems we battle with in our industries: keeping the reader/gatekeeper’s attention.

There’s a phrase in the movie Cold Mountain that describes this well: “They make the weather and then stand in it and say, ‘shit it’s rainin’” (I’ve always wanted to use that quote).

Fast writing, writing on command and writing to order are not contributions to the public or the industry. Sometimes knowing when to turn down a writing assignment for lack news/interest/emotions reasons is just as important as knowing how to write in the first place.

From love letters to science fiction novels, the writer starts with something they believe in, something that moves them so much that they want to put it down in writing to share with others. For each piece written, time must be devoted to believing in our own message, our own writing… and if we can’t seem to find the emotion in the message, then there are one of two problems:
1. We are not the right individual for that assignment.
2. It should not be written about, at least not yet.