Sell Your Heart

The thing about this blog is that it is an excellent outlet for a lot of things I need to say, but have no other place to get them out.  I use it when I am angry, I use it when I am elated.  I write here.

I have noticed, over time, knowing who some of my readers are, I have reserved plenty of what I need to put out there, keeping it internalized.  I am careful as to what I put out there.  I have, a couple of times, asked "if you don't like what you read, don't read it, for this is my place for my thoughts", but I find I don't follow my own rules.  I have several drafts of things written that are sitting, knowing what might come of it all if I ever actually hit the "publish" button.  I have become careful in my writing.

I recall mentioning it recently, and had a comment of "somethings are best left unsaid".  Are they?  Should it be acceptable for me to halt my words, cautioning against bringing about someone else's feelings?  What if someone else needs to hear what I have to say?  What if they have been waiting for it?  And even if they haven't, isn't it my own right to own my feelings, and my decision to voice them?

In a non-coincidence (as my dear friend Shelly knows all about) yesterday, I skimmed across some reading, and this article popped out.  Again the sonorous words before my eyes, screaming to me to own my feelings and stop running from them.  It is a letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald to a young author, Francis Turnbull, after reading her writing.

He says to her in this letter,  "You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell."

This is the basis of all my writer's block, and (enter "ah ha!" moment here) personal emotional struggles.  I've got to sell my heart...  That's a very hard thing to do when you keep it locked up, internalizing the voice of all feelings as to not "rock the boat" or hurt someone else's feelings. 

I ate up this article like it was a favorite meal.  I re-read this paragraph over and over, letting the seventy four year old words resonate through me.  "You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions..."  

Not everything is best left unsaid.  I have only my emotions... 

"You wouldn't be interested in a soldier 

who was only a little brave."

Thank you, F. Scott Fitzgerald.  

With Gratitude.