Ute Carbone
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Inside the Writer's Garret

On writing and life, with a little chocolate thrown in from time to time.

The Deep Dive

8/23/2016

2 Comments

 
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Lately, I’ve been exploring the more serious side of my nature and my writing. I’ve been writing from a deeper and more emotional place. This makes for more difficult writing days, because I’ve got to dive down, I’ve got to allow myself to be uncomfortable as my characters get uncomfortable. I have to face hard truths about life, mine and theirs, that I don’t necessarily want to reflect on.
But from these deep places comes the magic of story. Good stories take us to the edges of human endurance. And then they lift us high, they show us the way forward. I believe, profoundly, in the human spirit. I believe in our ability to go higher, to lift out of the darkness.
I’m willing to put my characters into harm’s way. It isn’t always easy. I love these imaginary people and want the very best for them. But here is the essence of story—the steps towards resolution are slow, the character stumbles and falls, begins again, and stumbles again, further downward until there is nothing but a sliver of hope. And they begin yet again. Love is tested. Resolve is tested. Courage is tested.
It's a lot like life, yours, mine, everyone on the planet’s.  Hard times come and go and come back again. We are tested. We stand up again. But in life, like in any good story, something comes of this. We are forged and tempered, we grow stronger for having gone through.
 In books, we can live a thousands of lives, we bear witness to thousands of journeys. Your life and mine and that of the character, as different as they are, are also very much the same. And as we share in the hard times, we can also be lifted, we can also find the best of ourselves.
Making my fiction work like this, on a deeper level, is my goal. It’s not an easy goal to strive for. Then again, the things worth striving for are rarely easy.
​

2 Comments
Theresa
8/23/2016 07:21:57 pm

As a reader, I love books that go deep emotionally. Of course, I don't like trials and tribulations in my real life, but those are the places I do the most growing, even though I never thought I had to grow as much as the experience pushes me to. Books that don't get real with emotions from the humorous to the traumatic don't ring true to me and make me think the writer just slapped something down to make a few dollars. I don't have time for books like that.

Reply
ute carbone
8/24/2016 04:00:10 pm

Sometimes a fluffy read is nice, just to vary things up. But when I think of the books I love best, those I press into a friend's hands with an enthusiastic 'you gotta read this', it's almost always because the story moved me deeply in some way.

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