Olivia (@olivia) I am so very glad to hear this!
It is not only novel writers that need input, but we need the voice of readers here too. You are a gifted creative. Do not think just because your preferences are not in story writing, that they are in any way less than. Poetry and music are essential art forms that are powerful ways to express wonder, beauty, and concepts. God gives us the idea of being part of a spiritual body in which every part is essential and no one part that functions in a certain way should think of themselves as more important or more useful than the other.
As a novel writer, I desperately need the perspective from a poet to tell me what images and illusions are evocative of emotions and feelings that need to be part of a scene. Cadence and rhythm are something musicians understand intuitively, and so your strengths in that help inform us prose writers what is lacking in our writing. You have some many meaningful ways to contribute that story writers need and can benefit from.
Poets and musicians and lyricists are storytellers. This cannot be denied. Your gifts are flames to brighten the darkness. Your voice is essential. What God shows you, others need to hear. That is why you are gifted. For expression to shine forth God’s glory in the ways that delight you. God places those desires in you for poetry and music to be enjoyed in fullness, but also to help refine us who need to hear the expression in the ways you are gifted to deliver them. Novel writers need your perspective.
If a novel writer, does not learn from a poet, their writing is flat and stilted. If a novel writer does not learn from a musician the quality of keeping a beat, or adding the sense of hearing to the interplay of the notes of characters and the environment’s harmony with mood, we cannot enliven a scene and make it sing. It becomes discordant to the reader’s inner hearing. Your gifts are essential. Please, please, please do not diminish the strengths and aptitudes God has gifted you with. We need your poetic voice. We need your ability to craft music. You belong here as an essential part of this body.
Here is a scripture that comes to my mind, just now:
But now [are they] many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: And those [members] of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely [parts] have more abundant comeliness. For our comely [parts] have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that [part] which lacked: That there should be no schism in the body; but [that] the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. [1 Corinthians 12:20-26 KJV]
Brian Stansell (aka O'Brian of the Surface World)
I was born in war.
Fighting from my first breath.
