The writer’s heart must be round. It must see through the obvious. It must have a heart for those who are heartless. A writer’s heart has to beat to the drum of love, even for those who don’t deserve it.

A few weeks ago, I dreaded the simple act of waking up because every single day, for about two weeks straight, there was an even more heinous crime reported than the day before. For some unknown reason, I was finally listening to the song of our world. I relented and emotionally ingested the calamities of the days. I listened to the deafening sounds of natural and unnatural catastrophes. I heard the shriek of train wrecks, earthquakes, forest fires, murdered toddlers, a whole fire brigade burned in one day, and an Australian basketball player murdered because some teens were bored. The hurt, confusion and tears of the survivors deafened me.

I let those truths wash over me like baptismal waters.

That day, as I rose from my tomb as one of the walking dead, I was no longer willing to lump all the news into one pile of “unfortunate,” and continue with my day. I took my work more seriously. The work of a writer is a noble job. It is to find the humanity in the inhumane. It is to unearth the truth of all souls, which brings us to a much more raw reality than the raw stories that created them.

Instead of blaspheming the life of a teen that shoots for fun, I started to think of his  agonizing inner life. I started to think how little that teenager had been taught about life and love and the sanctity of breath. I think how empty he must feel with nothing to look forward to that would curb his instincts. I think how spent by life his parents must have been to ignore these fundamental gifts and pass them on.

I want to rewrite this guy. I want to fill his holes and make him safe to be among us. I want to wash away the hurt that left him roaming free and unsupervised to further scar the world with more pain and regret. I don’t want to rest on my laurels of simply feeling sorry for him. As a writer, I am an activist. I march with my pen, holding up placards for the world to see the holes in our souls.

My characters have the power to make people stop and think. Characters help readers rise from the dead, making them see, feel and hear everything that makes our lives so horrific and so haunting. Well-sculpted characters can play in our heads like songs, dragging us out of our cell-phoned daze. The cries we hear on the news are real. These traumas that we suffer are real. The empty spaces left in our lives are not only for “them.” They are inclusive.

When I pick up my pen and write characters that are whole – filled with good and bad, sadness and light, humor and pain, I am invigorated once again. Soothed. I am able to see the world more clearly.  At that moment, I am being the change I want to see in the world: no judgment, just compassion.

It all lives in a writer’s heart and a writer’s hands.

Kim Green appeared in Minerva Rising’s Rebellion Issue and is always happy to write for a hungry group of women readers and writers. As an entertainment journalist, Kim’s work has appeared in Essence, The Source, Mode, American Baby, The Philadelphia Tribune, Paper and internationally, in i-D and The Wire, both London-based publications. Kim was a featured author in the African American serial novel, “When Butterflies Kiss” (published by Silver Lion Press) and a contributor in “Proverbs For The People” (Dafina Books).  As well, Kim co-wrote the Last Poets tome, “On a Mission: Selected Poems and a History of The Last Poets. (Henry Holt). Kim Green was the ghostwriter for “Life Is Not A Fairytale,” the autobiography of 2004 American Idol winner, Fantasia Barrino. The book was listed on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s Bestseller Lists. Kim is currently working on a new biopic of a R&B artist for Harper Collins. As soon as she is finished, she will return to her long-awaited sequel to ‘”hallucination.” “hallucination” is available on Amazon.com and at hallucinationthenovel.com.