Writers in search of the defining components of True Love
For the ages, writers have been compelled to study, write about, and evoke our emotions regarding the defining manners of ‘True Love’. What does it really mean? Is it self-defining? Or does the term reside in such an ambiguous state that it can’t be adequately or accurately described?
My journey into the novel ‘A Diary’s House’ actually began with an entirely separate and varied scope other than what the sub-title would suggest ‘Where true love endures’. It was my initial intent to promote a story of adventure, of lands full in beauty, lore and mysterious legends.
But the novel began to speak to me as I went, told me the way it wanted to go, and ultimately ended with a totally different message than I originally imagined it would turn out to be. This is truly where the ‘self-discovery’ of a writer comes from. The characters really do guide you
in how they act & their emotional impacts; honestly, provokingly displayed in the novels vital scenes.
It creates a realism unmatched, and the readers become engaged with that earnest performance. Suddenly this brings the novel to life, enhances the characters and their honest portrayals in every action they take. I feel the scope of ‘A Diary’s House’ matches this in every way.
As a writer you realize a novel can somewhat ‘invent itself’ as you proceed, in what I call the ‘journey of self-discovery’. It’s an internal mix really, finding yourself (and your emotions) in the bed of a story. Many writers will get bogged down in the novels’ details; outlines, story
developments, character structures, etc, but in the end the essential message is lost in what the writer is trying to convey. But how you feel, part-writer and part-reader, and what your emotions honestly derive while writing the novel should always be the underlying intuition guiding you as
you proceed.
‘True Love’, at least in ‘A Diary’s House’, can be described as a meadow or garden of flowers before their bloom in the spring. At first, you can’t imagine what it would look and feel like until suddenly, without warning, the temperature begins to elevate and the mornings are filled with the early spring dew. Then, almost overnight, they burst out into a vast array of colors, and this meadow is transformed into a completely different vision.
‘True Love’ has many different definitions, and they all can be very apt in describing the words meaning. But I will end on this note: A Character in my play ‘Hildengrass’ describes ‘True Love’ as…
A love which spawns no illusions in its birth, though finds an oasis in the shores of a blinding desert. But Love – which feeds the longing for it so to grow into a preoccupation; asks on cupid for more piercing arrows in its target; has cherish in the offering; makes dove birds stop in their passage and fondly admire this rapture to the heart; where devotion meets with longevity, and calls this equal to life; a flame of ever-burning, which seems longer than an ember, but hast the pulse of a forest fire; as fair as thy beauty made; more art than a kissing painter; a swain, a courtier, a lover to the essential definition; a madman for its obsession and affair; the gentle devotion of what it sacrifices as much as to the gaining on; the husband, the wife, the full marriage of sweet-calling affection; the home of fondness and mutual enchantment; the mania of passion and warming influence; Hope’s heart and caressing embrace – all to these, are the characters to True Love…
C. David Murphy
Author of A Diary’s House
About Greta
"/>
