From Heart to Mind and Back Again

© by Cathrene Gehue, 2008

Disclaimer: This post is a long one!

Children play from the heart no matter what they do. There’s no doubt; no question. Heart reigns in all they do, but somewhere along the way, the mind starts learning about the world we live in. And the world we live in values mind more than heart. It influences the best of us. As a child I wrote from the heart, then somewhere in my journey mind took over.

After dropping out of University of Toronto, I began working in the book distribution industry. For seven years it was both fun and frustrating at times. I was young and dreamed of becoming a published writer. Somewhere along the way, disillusionment occurred. The glamour of being a professional writer lost its sheen and allure. What had happened?

After years of working in various departments at different tasks, all those cogs which make up Book Distribution ended up reinforcing the same message over and over again. There was Shipping, Receiving, Order Fulfillment, Order Entry, and Invoicing, not to mention the Showroom, Marketing and Advertising, all viable operations in any business, and that’s all there was: Business.

Writing a story for publication seemed to be the smallest part in becoming a published writer, and I was only witnessing the distribution side of this industry. There was still the publishing side of it all. Aside from writing a story, the rest of the process was business, pure and simple.

Did that mean writing a story needed to be approached as if it were business too? Whatever is written needs to be marketable, saleable, right? So, yes, writing is business as well. At least, that’s what my mind had processed through observation during those years. Wow, did I ever get off to a wrong start!

As a result, I delved deeper and deeper into ideas and how I would implement them, discussing stories with friends and family, until when it came down to writing them, there was no energy left. All that remained was a highly conceptualized treatment, and nothing more.

Dreams of being professionally published started seeming too distant to attain, due to my lack of producing manuscripts. However, the desire to be published continued, and I saw only one way to combat this conflict: Self-publishing. Thus, began an era of producing zines.

The zines were fun. Who wouldn’t love full creative control? Even though my work wasn’t quite as edgy by fringe standards, it didn’t matter. Adhering to standards–mainstream, alternative or otherwise–could be tossed out the window. I could do whatever I wanted, which resulted in producing eight issues of Magination’s Myriad (aka MagMyr) and two issues of Pig Literature.

Even though they didn’t reach a wide audience–mostly friends and family–producing these zines led to a number of intriguing experiences. These included a poetry recital segment on a Mississauga cable tv show called Fusion; participating in Canzine 2001, a zine fair held in Toronto; and several reviews in Broken Pencil, a magazine about the zine culture.

Yet, during all of this, something remained ellusive in my writing. There was still a sense that none of it felt quite right. My mind kept insisting that if I wanted to expand my readership with zines, I would need to somehow impress readers within this subculture. Still, my mind hadn’t given up the idea that to be successful, you needed to meet the standards of the industry, whether it be publishing or self-publishing.

Ah, the mind, what an annoying little brat! The struggle to achieve any sort of publication started feeling something like beating a puffer fish against a brick wall. The wall showed no signs of any dent, and the fish only squeaked on impact. So I gave it up. I quit! I didn’t want to be published anymore and I stopped showing my work to anyone.

I needed a breath of fresh air so I switched over to making art full-time. It was a relief, a new creative beginning, even though I’d been dabbling in it since high school. Writing hadn’t been completely abandoned though. Instead, I wrote for myself, for the fun of it. A little bit of fan-fiction, but mostly fantasy-based stories, which when I read them even now, makes my heart flutter. And yes, its the same flutter I get when my boyfriend walks into the room–loving, joyful.

Hold on, what’s this? Loving. Joyful. Aren’t these emotions? And don’t emotions come from the heart? This was a new way to write. It felt different and I was uncertain about it, but the importance of engaging the heart while writing would take some time and more experiences to finally sink in. If only writing from the heart always assured positive results, perhaps it would have sunk in quicker.

Several years ago, I experienced writing from the heart in a number of projects: One was a single zine edition for a guy I cared about; another was a zine of experimental prose, based on what I was experiencing at that time, for friends and family.

These writings were written from the heart, fueled and driven not by any particular emotion, but the combined energy of simply feeling. During these projects, words lost their struggle and simply flowed. Everything wrote with ease. They were my best writings to date. I didn’t just know it; I felt it.

The labor and tedium experienced with previous writings had vanished. Conceptual clarity was brilliant; cohesion and continuity were strong. There was no resistance, and this was the first time I had relaxed within the writing process. Why? Because I was engaging my heart. Little did I know how people would react.

The zine to the guy just creeped him out, so I don’t recommend doing this for anyone who is a wuss. As for the zine offered to family and friends, their responses included, “I couldn’t express my feelings or be so open!” or “Do you really think you should be sharing this with people?” My comments are: “Well, I am open and can express my feelings, so why not do it? And yes, I should share this with people, because most people want to connect with others through their shared experiences.”

As you can see, this new way of writing wasn’t received very well, but at least I had found another approach to the writing process. As of this year, writing from the heart has yielded more positive results.

My boyfriend, in applying for an art grant, asked a friend to write a personal reference letter which would accompany the application. He later explained that he would have asked me but thought the granting committe might regard my letter as being biased or even a conflict of interest on my part, since I do visual art as well.

I completely understood his postion, but good old curiosity reared its bulging eye. Could I write an unbiased letter of reference? The quick answer, it turned out, was no. I was motivated by a desire for my boyfriend to succeed and so the letter remained biased. I wrote one anyway.

After my boyfriend read it, he found it very heart-felt and in some ways better than his friend’s letter of reference, because it revealed other aspects of his discipline he hadn’t considered. In the end, he used segments of it in his proposal.

So what is writing from the heart, and how can someone tell if it’s happening to them? One telltale sign, which I have experienced in both writing and painting now, is the phenomenon of push and pull.

Push and pull is the struggle to find the correct pattern or combination of elements which works best to convey your inner vision. It’s sort of like fussing, trying to get something just so, but the “just so” part is a reflection of some inner standard or preference of aesthetics.

In art it could be the application of paint in such a way that it continues to reshape a contour or edge of form until it finally feels right. In writing, it’s the constant rearrangement of words, phrases, and sentences until clarity of the author’s vision shines through. When paint or words are finally captured in the desired pattern, it feels “right”.

Push and pull is rather abstract. To give you a better understanding of how it manifests, here is an example of this phenomenon as it might occur to a writer:

“Okay, this isn’t the word I’m looking for. It’s the right idea, but the wrong sound. Let’s change the sentence around, and see if that helps. That phrase can be dropped. Hmm, the word still doesn’t work. Maybe if I just expand the sentence, make it a bit longer. Now I’ve lost the idea. Maybe if I re-write that part. Now it’s just too wordy, so let’s shorten it up a bit. Bingo!”

Push and pull isn’t entirely a mental construct; it’s instinct and feeling. It originates in and flows from the heart then embraces the mind. The mind has better things to do; its busy with conceptualizing, reorganizing and patterning data and stimuli, filtering and processing everything that is collected by our five senses.

So when the mind does something it isn’t designed to do, the experience is similar to shoving a square peg into a round hole. There’s straining and tremendous exertion, sweat, tears, and maybe even dry tongue, but that square peg will most likely never fit into that round hole, and if it does, it won’t ever fit very well. This is what happens when the mind works solo.

Heart is something else entirely. It’s function doesn’t deal with statistics and facts and all that tangible stuff, because no matter how you arrange any of it, it remains neutral and a bit empty. It has a tendency to rearrange all its bits into any number of perfectly good patterns. The mind loves doing that. The heart doesn’t.

Heart is where only one pattern resides, and it reflects our character and personality. All those values we appreciate and care for on a personal level are imprinted there. Our standards and sense of aesthetics are usually fueled by some flame in our hearts, unless we’ve let the outside world stamp it out. It is the source of our drive, determination and purpose. No one can touch these things. They are felt or experienced through expression of the self.

The interesting thing about heart is that it has a certain wisdom. In its own way of understanding, it knows it can never work solo either. Consequently, it’s a bit clingy and sticky, with a deep attraction to the mind. They both have what the other lacks, so they make perfect complements, but only the heart cares about that. So it pushes itself forward and pulls the mind along for the ride.

The beauty about engaging the heart first when it comes to writing, is that this push and pull phenomenon actually reduces the amount of effort required to write. With the heart engaged, there is only one pattern to explore and set down with words. With the mind, alone, there’s a number of possibilities to explore. And better still, writing to fulfill one’s personal tastes is a very satisfying, rewarding experience that no amount of accolades or complaints from others could ever squash.

In summary, writing from the heart ceates the momentum, desire and a single vision to push yourself through a writing project, which grabs and pulls the mind along the way, which in turns throws out information directly (consciously) and indirectly (subconsciously). With enough practice and editing, the resulting narrative is logical and appealing in a tangible, concrete way, yet is also infused with odd bits of lateral associations and something of the writer which gives it a magical quality.

Every writer has their journey, and writing from the heart isn’t for everyone. You do have to develop a bit of patience with the push and pull aspect of it. There’s also the possibility that some people will react to it adversely for any number of reasons. Should you find a way to self-publish (blogging?) for others to read, there’s no guarantee anyone will care about the same things you do.

In coming full circle with two different ways to engage writing, I can’t say one is better than the other overall. Having been dominated by mind in the writing process for so many years, and re-discovering writing from the heart, I do prefer the latter. Let’s just say, it feels right.