The Feels: An Author's Advantage

With puffy, red eyes I bring you good and bad news.



(Can we pause and take a second to appreciate my amazing, creative flow-chart-making abilities?)

Yes, it's true. Life doesn't always go as planned. And sometimes the way things go is a lot less fun than what we planned.

I know, I was surprised when I found out too.

Let me tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, there were three siblings. They all had red hair. And they were not the Weaslies. After many trials such as "She Won't Stop Touching Me" and "He Went in My Room Without Asking", the three became an inseparable trio. 

With impending adulthood in the horizon, the three made a pact. A pact that is totally reasonable. "When we grow up, let's all live right next door to each other and have a pool that stretches across the three backyards."

Adulthood came. The oldest one went to college, moved back home, got married and then moved to the next town, twenty minutes away from her beloved siblings. Eventually, the next two graduated from high school, got jobs, and did college. They still didn't have the three houses next door with the giant pool, but things were pretty okay anyway. 

Until...the middle one got engaged! Birds sang. Family cried tears of joy for the beautiful bride-to-be. And then she announced she'd be moving two hours away after the wedding. TWO HOURS. The oldest one cried lots of tears. Even though she was elated for her sister, she was sad to let go of their childhood fantasies and close proximity.

In the middle of all these tears, the oldest one giggled at a thought. "This gives me so much material to use in stories." 

And that concludes the story. I'm the oldest, by the way. Here's a super adorbs picture of us to tug at your heartstrings as you cry in sympathy for me and the three-house-length pool that may never be.

From left to right: Jen (the middle) , Bugy (the youngest), and me, Jessie at my brother's high school graduation.  

In case you got lost in that story and forgot the purpose, it was to tell you this:
-Life doesn't always go as planned.
-The bad news is that tears and not-so-fun emotions are a common side-effect.
-The good news is you're a writer.

You're a writer!

Not that we're generally cooler than, say, everyone else, but...we kind of have a one-up on them when it comes to The Feels.

See, when commoners non-writers get The Feels, they have to do things like:
-Talk it out
-Punch walls
-Scream in pillows
-Plants gardens
-Cry into buckets of greasy food
-Vent on Facebook and Twitter
-Play with sock puppets in therapy
-etc.

And sure, we can and do participate in that stuff too, but we (and all other superior people artists) have something more.

We use The Feels to make art. Beautiful, sad, happy, nostalgic, dream-filled art. We get to take that moment of pain and make it something more. We get to immortalized our special human-moments. We get to make sure they matter to other people as much as they matter to us. We get to send stories into the world that connect us with other people. We get to use The Feels to create heart.

And that's pretty cool.

___________________

I would like to dedicate this post to my sister and brother. Thank you for being the kind of people who make me cry at the thought of you being far away. I love you. (And shout out to my future brother-in-law because I love you too even though you're kind of partially responsible for the giant pool not happening.)

Love, Jessie

@Je55ieMullin5