Gotta Trust Your Gut

You have to master not only the art of listening to your head, you must also master listening to your heart and listening to your gut.

Carly Fiorina

For the most part, I think I write with my head and with my heart. My head tries to lay out the path from A to B and make sure things make sense. My heart then dives in and tries to make sure that the reader feels the true emotion of what I'm trying to convey. There are many times I leave heart marks (<---I just made that up, but I like it) on the paper. There are heart marks in all my stories, lots and lots of heart marks. I also have a pretty good sense of where the story should go (thanks, head).

So I write with my head and my heart. But I've got to learn to let my gut have some play time as well. I think there needs to be a fine balance between all three, and once that balance can be achieved, then the true storytelling can be achieved with confidence.

I wrote a chapter in my latest work in progress that took me from A to B and it also had a few heart marks in it as well, but my gut kept tapping on my head saying, "This isn't right. This isn't right at all." But guess what I did? I ignored my gut and pressed on, believing that as long as I had my head and my heart on the page, everything else would work itself out. So I sent it off to my main beta reader (super awesome friend), and she bounced it back to me with a big fat NO. I wasted my time. I wasted hers. I KNEW this chapter was wrong. From the very first sentence I knew it. I chose to ignore it, because to go back and rewrite three thousand words just didn't sound like fun :)

I've got to trust my gut. Sounds silly, but listening to that little voice would have prevented a lot of heart break and a lot of unnecessary work.

Here's what I learned: I went back and reworked that chapter and it is now SO much better. My head likes it, my heart is leaving my marks all over it, and my gut is satisfied.

Gotta love that gut :)