Hi, Dianne, thank you so much for what you say about my writing! Well, to be honest, my writing only improved with practice! I’ve been writing for years; plus, I went back to school and got a master’s degree in writing, so I could study it in a more serious way. You know, writing is a process…much like learning to play a piano. So it’s a matter of sitting down and practicing every day. To be honest, I’m a slow learner, so it did take me years before I felt “good” enough to even try to publish my work.

But, having said this, here are a few things to think about (and practice!) in order to move the process along.

One area to focus is the five senses. This sounds rather simplistic, I suppose, but in order to bring the reader into the heart of the experience, it’s important to create a world, an atmosphere, for them to enter. (Whatever that world might be.) So what does the tangible world around you smell like, taste like, sound like, feel like, look like? And be creative with these sensory images. You know, avoid “the sky is blue.” Instead, imagine it in your own unique way that will reveal you (if you’re writing nonfiction) or your protagonist, if you’re writing fiction. (It’s actually not a matter of using “big” words; more important is to use very exact words, so that YOUR experience sounds different from everyone else’s.)

In conjunction with this, allow this tangible world of the senses to reflect your interior state (or that of a fictional protagonist). For example, if you’re writing about being depressed, describe how the world looks in this depressed state. (In contrast, how does your immediate world look when you’re happy.) In other words, show the experience don’t just tell it. Maybe the goal is to write about being depressed without even using the word “depressed.”

By using sensory images in this emotional way (to reveal an interior state of being), you’re creating metaphors. And this is the heart of writing. By discovering one’s metaphors, you’re deepening the experience. In other words, I think it’s important to go deeper than just the “surface” story of what happened. Of course, yes, it’s important to write the story, itself, of what happened. So, what I’m suggesting is that, in addidtion to writing the story of “what happened,” it’s important to take the reader deeper, into what the experience means. This is done through metaphor.

Let me give you an example, so this doesn’t sound too abstract.

In "Love Sick," here is a passage where I’m describing a scarf given to me by my married lover: “I press the scarf against my nose and mouth. I take a deep breath. The scent is of him—leaves smoldering in autumn dusk—and I believe it is a scent I have always craved, one I will always want. I don’t understand why the scent of the scarf...seems more knowable, more tangible than the rest of him.”

Now, if I’d only written that I have this maroon scarf given to me by this man, this might be intersting information, but it doesn’t reveal what the scarf means to me in terms of the memoir (which is about recovering from sex addiction). So what I try to do here, in the second part of the paragraph, is “slant” the details about the scarf to show how the scarf is a metaphor. If I wrote this well enough(!), I’m specifically trying to show that the scarf is a metaphor for loss, for alientation, etc. (since, because of the addiction, I “know” the scarf better than I will ever “know” the man). In other words, yes, this section begins with my romanticizing the scarf, which is how I felt at the time I got it, back when I was in college. But, in the second part of the paragraph, I try to incorporate my more “writerly” self into the mix, try to deepen the experience by revealing what the scarf REALLY meant to me.

In sum, this metaphoric voice guides the reader through the quagmire of the addiction, revealing, over the course of the book, why I have self-destructive affairs with dangerous men and how this behavior affected my life. These metaphors help to clarify what the surface story is REALLY trying to say, the story that you want to explore.

Well, I hope this is clear? I mean, yes, writing takes a lot of practice, and it is hard work, but it’s also very rewarding. And, in the end, in addition to practice, it’s simply a matter of learning these techniques—such as how to create a metaphor, for example. Sue