Here is an example of how I made myself vulnerable in a story from Wounded by Words titled “The Accident”

“Richard, what happened?” I gasped as the front door opened, and my oldest son walked in. His head was bleeding, and he had a petrified look on his face.
His brother Mike followed and said, “If you think he looks bad, wait until you see the car!”
“I don’t care about the car. I care about you two. What happened?” I asked again.
“We dropped off a couple of the guys after water polo practice. Dave was hanging out the window, so I reached over and pulled him back in,” said Richard.
“And the car rolled forward and hit a tree,” added Mike. “Richard had unfastened his seatbelt, so when the car stopped, he hit the windshield. I think he did more damage to the car than the tree did.”
I saw that the cut on Richard’s forehead was minor, so I cleaned it up and put a Band-Aid on it. “Do you hurt anywhere? Do you feel dizzy?”
“My neck hurts,” Richard said, rubbing the back of his neck.”
“We’d better get that checked out at the emergency room,” I said. I opened the front door and looked at the car. The front window was shattered. “Oh, no! We probably shouldn’t drive that car. I’ll call Dad at work. It’s 7:00 P.M. Surely he can come home and take us to the hospital.”
I dialed my husband’s office number. When he answered I said, “Richard’s been in a car accident. His head broke the windshield, and his neck is injured.” My voice sounded on the edge of hysteria. “He drove home after the accident, but I’m afraid to drive him to the hospital with the windshield broken. Can you please come home right away and take us?”
“No, I’m in a business meeting,” was his curt reply.
“We really need you to drive us to the hospital!” I pleaded.
“I said no! You deal with it!” he shouted. Then he hung up on me.
Acid churned in my stomach, but I said in a resigned voice, “Come on, Richard. I’ll take you to the emergency room.” Fighting back tears, I slowly drove the damaged station wagon to the hospital, which thankfully was nearby.

I was careful to use Richard’s words, to run the story by him, and to ask his permission to publish it.

Second, to get in touch with your readers and touch their hearts, be willing to step out in faith and share yourself. Be open and honest in your writing and willing to reveal your innermost thoughts. I’ll warn you—it will make you transparent and vulnerable.

You must be willing to take a risk. Don’t be afraid to be honest with your audience. Look in the Bible at David, Joseph, and Paul. We know of their weaknesses by the accounts told of them. People cannot relate to someone who is not vulnerable. Be careful not to make your characters (real or imaginary) too perfect. On the other hand, don’t air your dirty laundry or anyone else’s. If your material is sensitive, you might consider writing under a pseudonym.

We can help others through our shortcomings, our mistakes, and our failures. We can share the lessons we’ve learned. We can say, “I don’t walk in your shoes, but this is what I’ve been through, and this is how I coped.” We must appear real to our audience to be of service to them. This is what I try to do in all my writing. In my book, Wounded by Words, I made my self vulnerable and showed how I had been verbally abused as did one of my co-authors. Our third co-author is a family therapist who provides counseling and encouragement in the book to those wounded by words. We also gathered many other people’s stories to add credibility to the book.

The tips and techniques I will give for writing from the heart will work for articles, personal experience stories, devotionals, and even fiction. I use all these techniques in my books also.

Now, how do we achieve this?

First, be in tune with your audience. To write effectively you need to spend time talking to your audience and understanding their needs. It helps to be actively involved with them in church groups or wherever they are.

For a year I was editor of a children’s magazine, Trails ‘N’ Treasures, and I also taught Sunday school for eight years. Plus, I have a build in critique staff of 12 grandchildren. I carefully listen to their opinions. We can’t write what we want them to read; we have to write what appeals to them or they won’t read it.

For example: When I was writing an early reader book, I wrote: “The monkey reached for the rope.” My granddaughter stopped me and said, “Grandma, ‘reached for’ is boring! The monkey ‘grabbed’ the rope.” She was right. “Grabbed” made it sound much more exciting.

We need to: Stop. Listen. And then Write!

We can only write what God lays on our hearts if we write in His strength, rather than our own. When we open our mouths, pick up a pen, or type on our computers and let words flow, it allows other individuals to gain a glimpse into our souls. Hopefully, they will find God’s love there, because often, we are the only contact people will have with Him. We should always pray before we begin writing, so that we will be in tune with God’s will.

Let me quote 2 Corinthians 3:3 from the Tyndale Living Bible that speaks of Writing from the Heart. “They can see that you are a letter from Christ, written by us. It is not a letter written with pen and ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not one carved on stone, but in human hearts.”

To be effective, our writing must be carved on our own hearts in order for us to reach the hearts of our audience.

Here is a quote that reaffirms how to get in touch with your readers:
“What leaves your head, enters another’s head.
What leaves your heart, enters another’s heart.”

You can create an emotional tone whether you are writing about a place, an emotion, or a tragedy such as suicide. You can make your readers laugh or make them cry. Create tears in your reader’s eyes.

The way to do this is to “Show, don’t tell.” Show the reader your message through emotions and personal stories. Reach out with your writing and touch the hearts of your readers as Lallani has done in the example below from my book, You Start with One:

“The day arrived when it was time to say good bye; our ‘vacation’ in Sri Lanka was at an end. We were not sure when, or if, we would see Lallani again…

“(Lallani said) ‘I’m staying home because you are going back to America. I’ll never see you again. I must stay with you to the end.’ I stepped toward her and placed my hands on her shoulders. I felt at a loss for words. I wanted to give her one more thing, but all my trinkets, candy, and gum were gone.

“Then I reached in my shirt pocket and pulled out my worn New Testament that I always carried. Over the years, I had underlined it and written in the margins. The pages were crinkled and bent. ‘Lallani, I want to leave this valuable book with you. Don’t let your parents sell it. It tells stories about Jesus.’

“Lallani nodded her head. Her lower lip quivered.

“I swallowed and said, ‘I will pray for you, Lallani, and for Gongala and your parents, too.’ A lump formed in my throat. I could not speak. I felt as if I was deserting my own child.

“Lallani cried softly. ‘Never see you again, Uncle.’

“I put my arms around this special little girl and held her for a moment.”

There is power in simplicity and personal sharing. Fill your anecdotes with emotion, not abstract ideas. Emotion is where people can identify with you.

A second way to get in touch with your readers is to be willing to step out in faith and share yourself. Be open and honest in your writing and willing to reveal your innermost thoughts. I’ll warn you—it will make you transparent and vulnerable. You must be willing to take a risk. Don’t be afraid to be honest with your audience. Look at David, Joseph, and Paul. People are aware of their weaknesses by the accounts told of them in the Bible.

We can help others through our shortcomings, our mistakes, and our failures. We can share the lessons we have learned. We can say, “I don’t walk in your shoes, but this is what I’ve been through, and this is how I coped.” We must appear real to our audience to be of service to them.

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 response in our readers.

You Start with One is a book I wrote about a ministry that feeds and vocationally trains thousands of children a day in Sri Lanka. Because of the problems there, I wasn’t able to go to Sri Lanka until after I finished writing the book. I’ve never experienced malnutrition or poverty, but I’d been to Tijuana and Jakarta. I’ve missed a meal and been hungry. I watched slides and movies and looked at pictures. I entered my imagination and felt what those children were experiencing. When I was able to travel to Sri Lanka, I found the scenes just as I had pictured them in my mind and in the book.

I’ve made this post a little longer since I missed last week. I was camping and my cell phone malfunctioned so I had no Internet service.

Let’s talk about getting in touch with your readers. This is what writing is all about. You want to move your readers to take action and to change their lives. You want them to grow closer to God.

How do you accomplish this? First, be in tune with your audience. To write effectively, you need to spend time talking to your audience and understanding their needs. It helps to be actively involved with them in church groups or wherever.

If you are writing for teens, for instance, go to their hangout and listen to them talk. Read what they are reading, not what you wish they would read. Talk to them about their ideas, hopes, and dreams.

With the increasing importance of electronic publishing, the matter of electronic rights has become an issue. Most book contracts include a clause for electronic rights (e-rights), although the wording on this is often vague. The payment on e-books is usually lower than on printed books, but the number of e-book sales is mushrooming! Make sure your e-book rights are covered clearly in a book contract.

But what about articles and stories? Often contracts are not involved when selling these. This has become an enormous issue without clear-cut guidelines. Thus, you need to know exactly what rights you have sold to a particular publication. More and more magazines are going electronic, either by printing some articles on their website or by featuring the entire magazine electronically. Some magazines still have paper copies as well as the electronic version. If a person sells “First Rights,” should a publisher be able to reprint that article on a website without the author’s permission and without additional compensation for the author? Unfortunately, the meaning and scope of e-rights has not been precisely defined, and, as a result, courts have differed on their interpretation of the law. Personally I think if a person sells first rights, the publisher should be required to pay the author a reprint fee if his or her article is used electronically.

If you sell “All Rights” to your manuscript, then the publisher owns your work, and you cannot print it elsewhere without getting written permission from them. Try not to sell all rights if possible unless you are signing a work-for-hire contract. You normally receive a flat fee for these, and the publisher retains all rights, and the copyright is in the name of the publishing house. Sometimes your financial state may dictate that it would be worthwhile to do some pay-for-hire work. Once you turn in the completed work, you are normally paid in full within 30 days.

“Book Rights,” however, are different from other rights. When you sign a contract to write a book, the document is normally 12-14 pages, and the publisher holds your rights on that book as long as it stays in print. You may only use the amount of material that falls under “Fair Use” (Session 2) when quoting material from your own books. If you want to excerpt articles or stories though from one of your books in print, normally the legal department of your publishing house will give you permission. After all, the publicity is good for the publishing house. As I previously mentioned, if you are selling an article or story to be included in someone else’s book, I’d recommend selling one-time rights.

If your article or story has not been published, I recommend you sell first rights, rather than simultaneous rights. Many editors will not show interest if you are shot gunning your material to a number of publications at once when the piece has never been published. Plus, you will usually be paid more for first rights.

However, once your article is published for the first time, by all means feel free to sell reprint rights on it. You will probably earn a third to a half as much for reprint rights. Nevertheless reprint rights are an excellent way to earn extra money by selling your manuscripts over and over.

“One-time rights” give a publisher the opportunity to print your material one time. Use this terminology when selling a piece for a book compilation since books take a long time to come out in print. In the meantime, you can resell reprint rights on the piece. Also, one-time rights may be confusing to the editor, who may wonder whether or not your material has been published before. As a result you may be paid a lower amount than first rights would be given. Also, you can offer one-time rights to publications in other countries, particularly in the Third World, on material for which I own the copyright.