Feeding the Soul

I got an e-mail recently from a seventy-year-old woman. She said, “your writing fed my soul.” I was so touched by her words. I also had this funny sense of both knowing and not knowing what she meant. I hope that we all have had at some point in our lives the sensation of having our soul nourished by a work of fiction. How it happens or when it happens is all kind of magical. Nor, in my experience, is there a particular kind of book that triggers this peculiar satisfaction. I say “peculiar” because unlike eating real food, this food is a funny mixture of contentment and yearning. Paradoxically, it “feeds” by awakening a kind of aspiration that is and is not like hunger. Sometimes I wonder whether an author can consciously write for the reader’s soul. There may be authors out there who can, but they play with fire. I’m sticking to the Zen archer’s humble rule: aim to the side and let the target hit the arrow, if it wants to. And then there is this disturbing question: is there any relationship between writing FOR the soul and writing FROM the soul? That, after all, seems somewhat more within the author’s control. I once wrote a book pretending I had sixty or so days to live. That little exercise in existential visualization took me to a place I’ve never been before. I was, among other things, surprised to find so much humor there. Flannery O’Connor says that every author has a bone to which they return again and again to gnaw and gnaw. The image assumes that we have found our bone or at least know where to look for it. To write from the soul is to gnaw at and be gnawed by the bone of your ultimate concern.You cruelly burden your poor characters with your question and then trail behind them as they struggle for some kind of answer. You’re the gold miner and your characters are your pick and shovel. Nor is the soul purely a place of darkness and dirt. If you’re writing from there you’re still sitting outside in the reception area. Nor does writing from the soul make this endeavor any less a simple task, a craft, the job and duty that must be meekly done. Still, you’re in the bowels digging or in the heights welding. A certain courage is required.