"I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood"
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Morgan links genuine progress in writing to a moment of resistance, when a scene hurts so much the writer can barely face it. That is not a call for melodrama; it is a call for courage. Pain here is a proxy for truth. When a writer edges toward the hardest memories, the ugliest motives, the most consequential losses, the work begins to touch what readers actually live with but rarely say. The metaphor of drawing blood insists that good prose costs the writer something. It takes a cut, a risk, a willingness to be wounded so the page can carry real heat.
This advice doubles as a craft lesson. Conflict is the engine of narrative, but conflict only matters when it exposes stakes that feel dangerous. Shying away from the charged moment produces polite, forgettable scenes. Moving into it requires more than confession; it requires precise observation, structure, and restraint so the pain is shaped into meaning rather than spilled as unprocessed feeling. The writer must be exacting about what happened, what it felt like, and what it changed, so the reader encounters an experience, not a plea.
Morgan is a poet and novelist of Appalachian life whose work, including Gap Creek, is filled with labor, loss, and endurance. His background gives weight to the demand. He has written through hardship and knows how the hardest scenes, handled with clarity, become the most alive. As a teacher, he gives students a practical compass: the knot in the stomach is a sign you are near the vein. Go there. Do it carefully. Cut only as deep as the story requires. Then craft until the wound becomes art.
Readers sense when a writer has taken a real risk. They lean in because the page carries the pulse of a life honestly examined. Drawing blood is not a stunt; it is the moral courage to go first, so that someone else can feel seen.
This advice doubles as a craft lesson. Conflict is the engine of narrative, but conflict only matters when it exposes stakes that feel dangerous. Shying away from the charged moment produces polite, forgettable scenes. Moving into it requires more than confession; it requires precise observation, structure, and restraint so the pain is shaped into meaning rather than spilled as unprocessed feeling. The writer must be exacting about what happened, what it felt like, and what it changed, so the reader encounters an experience, not a plea.
Morgan is a poet and novelist of Appalachian life whose work, including Gap Creek, is filled with labor, loss, and endurance. His background gives weight to the demand. He has written through hardship and knows how the hardest scenes, handled with clarity, become the most alive. As a teacher, he gives students a practical compass: the knot in the stomach is a sign you are near the vein. Go there. Do it carefully. Cut only as deep as the story requires. Then craft until the wound becomes art.
Readers sense when a writer has taken a real risk. They lean in because the page carries the pulse of a life honestly examined. Drawing blood is not a stunt; it is the moral courage to go first, so that someone else can feel seen.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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