I've only been a Creative Writing major for a semester – almost a year now – with focuses in creative non-fiction writing as well as poetry, and fiction next semester.
I'd taken a year of Creative Writing as an elective in high school, learning different creative forms, conventions (or how to break convention), and styles, cementing my voice and finding what genre of writing works best for me.
I've written about countless topics in too many forms to remember, each solidifying my skills and allowing writing as well as reading to become second nature to me.
Surprisingly, it wasn't until this semester that I realized I had never truly written from the heart.
Sure, there are things I wrote about that concern the heart – a lost love or a love found, family, friends, and the whole shebang – but it was never really a tug that pulled me from my heart to write something.
Now I'm taking an intro level poetry class as a part of my major and I've begun writing more and more and creating pieces that I'm proud of, even if I know they need revision and editing.
Poetry has always been my favorite genre of writing but it wasn't until this semester that I realized that there's something more than what we put into what we create and it usually has nothing to do with our heart.
I believe that we tend to write more often from our gut.
It is the topic that we feel strongly about, perhaps connected to our love of something, but the pull and draw of the subject is something that we feel deeply and know we must write about.
It pops into our head and we follow it almost blindly, knowing that somehow we must put it on paper and free it from our chests.
This type of writing feels like instinct, and it is what comes most naturally to me and is usually my strongest work.
You'll know you've written from your gut when every time you read whatever you've worked on, it can still impact you the way the emotions did when they occurred.
Butterflies in your stomach?
Writing from deep within you – further than where your heart beats or your lungs process air – is where all of the things you let sit and build, stay. It is where we pull from to use our voice, and this voice, I've found, is so much stronger and more important than most other works.
One of the best ways to write from your gut is to let your inspiration flow and follow its own shape and form. Do not constrain yourself. Do not seek for a topic.
When something hits you, whether it's a word, a sentence, an image, or an action, pursue it and allow it to tell you where it wants to go.
From your gut comes instinct, and instinct writing will let you unleash ideas and beliefs that you could have never imagined.
