Authenticity

I was telling someone at a party about my creative writing course recently:

"You know," he said "you've tapped into one of the great needs of our information age."

I said "Huh?" or something very like that.

"The need for authenticity" he went on. "People need to know who they are, and your course does that for them."

That struck a chord with me.

Two moments of truth from the writing class:

One of my participants burst into tears after a writing exercise one evening. She said that while writing, she'd suddenly realised why she was doing the course. It wasn't that she particularly wanted to be a published writer. "I'm writing to find my own voice," she said. And the course was making that happen for her.

Another participant had decided that the piece that she would work on during the course would be given as a gift for someone she cared about very much. She worked on her story through successive drafts, taking on board suggestions from the group for improving it. In the end she had a polished piece in her hand and she gave it to her friend with love.

A short time later he passed away. But she had the knowledge that she had given him something very special and from the heart.

When things like this happen, I just feel so ... humbled. There's a great satisfaction in having touched people at their deepest.

And the funny thing is that when writers begin to write from that kind of genuine, heartfelt need - something special begins to happen on the page.