You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of empathy and emotional depth in storytelling.
In this quote, Charles Yu suggests that to tell a compelling story, one must not only develop emotional connections (symbolized by growing a heart) but also be ready to confront and deconstruct one's own emotions (smashing the first heart). This duality highlights the intricate and often painful process of storytelling, where personal experiences and emotional truths must be explored and expressed, often through a lens of vulnerability.
In practice
In a writing workshop, this quote can inspire participants to inject more emotion into their characters.
I had forgotten: this is what it feels like to live in time. The lurching forward, the sensation of falling of a cliff into darkness, and then landing abruptly, surprised, confused, and then starting the whole process again in the next moment, doing that over and over again, falling into each instant of time and then climbing back up only to repeat the process.
I am transcribing a book that I have, in a sense, not yet written, and in another sense, have always written, and in another sense, am currently writing, and in another sense, am always writing, and in another sense, will never write.
All of her heart, a meaningless phrase, but correct and precise, too. She used her heart to love him, not her head, and not her words and not her thoughts or ideas or feelings or any other vehicle or object or device people use to deliver love or love-like things.
Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it.
Maybe we spend most of our decades being someone else, avoiding ourselves, maybe a man is only himself, his true self, for a few days in his entire life.
Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.
It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege.
The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.
Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin....Writing as a lesser form of dance.
I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
Prose is admittedly an art rooted in social intercourse, and a fiction writer is faster to find a common denominator with his cell mates than a poet is.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.