Posts
The 3 Faces of the Heart :
Sex. Friendship. Romance.
As writers we must know each face.
Each face must be glimpsed by our readers for them to want to stay in the world we write into being.
Think SEX AND THE CITY.
Yes, there was sex. There was talk about sex. Boy, was there.
There was even romance. But at the heart of its success was friendship ... and humor (which in a way is the lifeblood of friendship.)
For me the parade of spotless, unwrinkled designer clothes cast the women as mannequins. Their obsession with men devoid of any other interests made them as soulless as mannequins, too.
Still their friendship carried the show.
But were they ever friends with their lovers?
Can sex ever blossom into a relationship without friendship? Perhaps sex can grow into love, for love is a kind of obsession. And obsession is blind.
Friendships endure, not because they see less, but because they understand more.
Friendship.
Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."
It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne. Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote :
"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
Friendship.
It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening.
Or giving a damn.
They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"
Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.
Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.
Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.
Your novel must have magic to endure in the hearts of your readers. Not the magic of spells weaving patterns of color in the night. But the magic of friendship casting its healing light in the heart of two lovers.
Abigail and John Adams. Their years of letters shows lovers grown into friends. Spencer (from Parker's series again) and his one great love Susan Silverman is a great love of friends in literature.
If you can ignite that magic within your pages, the readers will read and re-read your book.
I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship :
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
***
I remember driving down lonely rural roads after Hurricane Rita as I delivered rare blood to the Katrina-devastated hospitals surrounding New Orleans. I also remember pushing back acid memories of the destruction by singing along with the Eagles as I wound down strange country roads :
Sex. Friendship. Romance.
As writers we must know each face.
Each face must be glimpsed by our readers for them to want to stay in the world we write into being.
Think SEX AND THE CITY.
Yes, there was sex. There was talk about sex. Boy, was there.
There was even romance. But at the heart of its success was friendship ... and humor (which in a way is the lifeblood of friendship.)
For me the parade of spotless, unwrinkled designer clothes cast the women as mannequins. Their obsession with men devoid of any other interests made them as soulless as mannequins, too.
Still their friendship carried the show.
But were they ever friends with their lovers?
Can sex ever blossom into a relationship without friendship? Perhaps sex can grow into love, for love is a kind of obsession. And obsession is blind.
Friendships endure, not because they see less, but because they understand more.
Friendship.
Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."
It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne. Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote :
"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
Friendship.
It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening.
Or giving a damn.
They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"
Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.
Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.
Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.
Your novel must have magic to endure in the hearts of your readers. Not the magic of spells weaving patterns of color in the night. But the magic of friendship casting its healing light in the heart of two lovers.
Abigail and John Adams. Their years of letters shows lovers grown into friends. Spencer (from Parker's series again) and his one great love Susan Silverman is a great love of friends in literature.
If you can ignite that magic within your pages, the readers will read and re-read your book.
I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship :
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
***
I remember driving down lonely rural roads after Hurricane Rita as I delivered rare blood to the Katrina-devastated hospitals surrounding New Orleans. I also remember pushing back acid memories of the destruction by singing along with the Eagles as I wound down strange country roads :
