On Writing Love

It’s almost Valentine's Day. I know many of us don’t actually celebrate it, but for just as many, the date has been quietly nagging at us. Without delving into the history of this celebration, it’s now known simply as a day to celebrate love. How often do you talk about love? Some might call it a clichéd subject, and then never bring it up again. However, love is all around us. It is interwoven into our lives, and it is also present in many novels, scripts, and poetry. Today, I will try to answer some questions about love, and how and why we write it.

This Thing Called Love, and Why We Write It

Before we jump right into it, let’s just go ahead and delve into our current situation. It’s currently 2021, the pandemic is still in full force, the world is in shambles and many of us are struggling in life. Valentine’s Day is creeping up on us and with it, a sort of bittersweet, forlorn mood. In times like these, it’s hard to think about love, isn’t it? Forgive the morbid monologue, but the world is seeing more deaths, more sadness and more sorrow. Grief grips us so tightly that it feels hard to breathe; why then, should we write about love? I think the answer is fairly simple. We write about love because we are human.

Humans are meant to feel, to hold affection, and to carry these emotions with us till the end of our living days. I think it is important to remember that writing love isn’t just about creating a story like Romeo and Juliet. It’s not just sonnets, heartfelt poetry or a grippingly romantic novel that brings tears to your eyes. Now I’m not saying you can’t write a new Romeo and Juliet; you certainly can. I think new romance stories will always be welcomed in this world. What I’m offering is just another outlook on writing this odd combination of feelings that we define as love.

Writing love is also about looking at the things around you. How often do we stop and consider the many different things around us? Love isn’t just limited to the butterflies in your stomach. Love is also kindness. Love could be simple things like laughing with your friends on an online call, baking cookies for Chinese New Year, praying together as a family, and experiencing this thing we call life together. When you write about love, you are putting these emotions down onto paper (or well, onto a digitalised platform). Writing itself is special. You are immortalising your thoughts, your feelings and threading them into a million stories in sentences that can fill up to a hundred pages. Isn’t that a thought? When you ‘write love’, you are immortalising it. Think about that! Your creation, your love, it’s immortal.

Love can be many things. It can be tragedy, it can be fear, but it can also be warmth and joy. Ultimately, you choose what to do with it. Try personifying love. What form does it take? Is it a puppy barking for attention? A cat snuggling into a carpet under the sun? Is it your mother’s laugh when you make a mess in the kitchen? It’s many things. When I personify love, I think of a palm-sized fairy, giggling at me and asking, “Hey! What’s next?” Sometimes, I don’t have an answer (and that’s fine), other times, I imagine myself going, “Well, we have an adventure ahead of us!”

Fear of Writing Love?

Fairytales aside, I think we are afraid of writing love. I think we, as humans, are afraid of love. And that is why we struggle with writing it. But it hasn’t stopped us from loving love anyway. I’m here to tell you, so what! So what if you’re afraid of writing love! It isn’t wrong. It’s only when you allow that fear to consume you that you start to have problems. As writers, I believe that love is a topic that we will always write about. Because of this, we are afraid. We ask ourselves questions; what if what we’re writing is repetitive? What if this love isn’t enough? What if it’s too cliched? What if, what if?

When you start to fear, you start to expect. Expectations of producing a piece weighs us down, and the pressure to write something good consumes us. I’ve been there, I dare say that you’ve been there too. Stop. Take a minute, and then ask yourself again; why do we write love? Well, we write love because we are human! The best part is, nothing can take that away from us. And hey, what’s wrong with a little repetition! We all experience love in a different way. With each piece, you are writing what you define as love, and that, dear reader, is enough.

Let’s Start Writing

Now that we’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering: ok, we solved the mystery of ‘why we write love’. But, hey, what do we actually write?

My advice is to not jump straight into sonnets and love novels. If you’re already struggling, it is enough just to start. You can write about so many things. It can be about something as small as your favourite pastry to something as big as the ocean. You can write about your days, how you experience this life, how you see love and how experience it. Embarrassment is common, but through that embarrassment is a piece of writing that is unique to only you. Will you let embarrassment stop you from creating this unique piece?

Open your mind up, and don’t hold back from putting all those emotions into words. No story is too small. Even a single sentence can be a story. Putting one word down is the beginning of a piece, the start of something new. Then before you know it, you’d have something new to work on. Reading is also a key element to get those cogs in your brain working. Let stories inspire you to write your own. There is no shame in consuming a piece of writing to help you with your own. You can also enjoy these works while you’re at it!

To write love, you must not be afraid of it.

To end this segment of mine, I would like to ask a question. Dear reader, what do you think about love?

If you would like to get your work published on our blog, don’t hesitate to drop us an email. We would love to hear from you. Happy writing!