Third, we don’t have to undergo an exact experience in order to write about it, but we need to feel passionately about our subject. We can use a similar emotional response within ourselves to evoke a reaction in our reader. If God hasn’t touched you on a particular subject, you aren’t going to touch your reader. Write from your experiences. Write about what is around you—the everyday occurrences. Be aware of interesting details or parallels in life. Write from your heart.
For example, my latest book is Too Soon to Say Goodbye: Healing and Hope for Suicide Victims and Survivors. I wrote it with the same two co-authors who coauthored Wounded by Words with me. Karen’s son committed suicide, and Jeenie deals with suicide survivors in her practice as a marriage and family therapist. No one close to me has taken their own life, but I have several friends whose sons have, and it is a subject I feel passionately about, so I feel comfortable writing about the subject. We used stories of many people who have been touched by the suicide of a loved one, or who had contemplated suicide at one time. Many of the stories are written under pseudonyms. It was the hardest book to write of the 30 I have written.