Writing from heart

My students often ask me, "how to write novels beautifully?"

Well, you write novels tactfully - Beauty is the prologue and climax of the technique. There lies a difference between beauty (that is art) and technique (that is skill).

You didn't learn to see, vision is natural to you. You didn't learn to hear, or smell, or feel, or produce sounds - you and I do it without having developed any skills. Yet, the degree of excellence varies with the degree of personal liking and interests. Some like to deliver speeches, so they have learned ways of speaking beautifully, but that does not mean that they have learned to produce sounds from their throat because they like to deliver speeches- sounds came to them naturally. In other words, skills related to language are developed naturally. The only language-skill that never develops naturally is the skill of writing - it always has to be learned, practised, rehearsed and sharpen - - like any other art.

To be a dancer, you must rehearse moves. To be a singer, you must rehearse notes. To be a writer, you must rehearse words. And above all, to be an artist, you must rehearse expressions. An artist knows how to present his sincere expression in the most beautiful way - one of the most powerful rehearsal artists have got.

Dance! if you feel expressed in moves. 
Write! if you feel expressed in words.

Why poets write poetry? If the sole purpose of writing poetry is to communicate ideas, then why take pains to wrap the ideas in some fancy garb of rhythm and rhyme? I think one can communicate more easily in plain language than poetry.

Poets write poetry because they feel expressed in the rise and fall of their emotions and ideas. When the rhythm imitates their aggression of thoughts, when the rhyme doubles their passions, they (poets) feel completely expressed. Because now they have not only communicated the ideas but also the way ideas sprung in their existence.

Novelists write novels because they feel expressed in weaving. Novelists are weavers, stitchers, like tailors. They weave the fabric into a shape that reflects the personality of its wearer. They stitch the fabric with the needle made of cultural and societal metal; the texture of their stitched fabric gives a feel of society in it; a feel of something very familiar, ugly, and close to our hearts. Novel writers are magical weavers - the artists of a superlative degree, where unconscious, high-level dexterity is the engine, and Art is the fuel.

You may learn, sooner or later, to develop dexterity; but the secret of art is sincerity, which is the highest virtue of all the arts, it must be blossoming in your heart. Try living by the virtue rather than the skill, the artist within you shall rise one day and create a writer of you. I do not guarantee of the skill, but the word of heart, I promise, will definitely get straight into the heart and settle there for an eternity.