The Death of a Valentine’s Day Post

In honor of today being Valentine’s Day, I was going to write a brilliant post that connected this holiday of love to literature in a way that would fascinate everyone. But then, I was doing some research for this post, I came across so many collections of "Valentine’s Day love poems" and other sappy works, that I had an epiphany. I realized that all those poems are stuff many of you read back in grade school. There’s nothing new. Nothing exciting.

I also thought about going into the history of Valentine’s Day. However, a quick search on Google showed me that the history of this holiday is pretty well known and already condensed into easy-reading form via Wikipedia (which I took the liberty of linking to in the first sentence of this post). I concluded that me writing a Valentine’s Day history would be like reinventing the wheel.

Part of the problem, I admit, is that I hate Valentine’s Day. I don’t get excited about it and I’m sick of everyone asking me what I’m doing today to celebrate. My answer is always the same: "Nothing!" No cards. No flowers. No gifts. Just business as usual.

But I think that I should at least address the issue of what Valentine’s Day represents – as it is celebrated in modern times. Love! That one word has almost infinite different connotations and meanings, depending on who you ask. People spend their entire lives struggling with love in one way or another. Love is not a thing, it’s more of a concept (I’m not speaking in terms of verbs, nouns, etc). This concept is so big that writing about it in a way that’s not sappy or sensationalized is very difficult.

On those rare occasions when I even attempt to address the issue of love in my fiction, I do so cautiously. And because love is such a huge concept, one can’t write about it in general terms. What does this mean? It means that it’s best to show specific instances of love in your writing. For example, instead of writing a long narrative trying to express how much a woman loves a man (boring!), show it with specific events and acts, and even within the dialogue itself. In fact, a crafty writer can make an entire story about love without even using the word "love".

This idea of showing, not telling, is nothing new in writing fiction. In fact, it’s probably one of those overdone bits of wisdom that can actually cause more harm than good in some writers. But in a case like this, when trying to wrap your mind around such a large concept, it’s better to be safe then write a 500-page novel filled with cliches and boring pages of narrative.

Another smaller lesson you can learn from my lack of good Valentine’s Day-related post deals with the issue of writing about something that makes you excited. It’s no accident that my lack of interest in this holiday makes it very hard to write about. The same can be said for just about anything. Even when I’m working on a short story, and I drag it out for several months. My excitement level for the story goes down and so does my motivation to work on the story. But Valentine’s Day is a double-edged sword for me because of my lack of interest, and because everything about this holiday (poems, etc) have been way overdone. I was doomed to fail before I even started.

With all of that said, I’m interested to hear what others think of this holiday. Do you hate it like I do? Or do you like Valentine’s Day (don’t be shy)? Leave a comment and let the rest of us know how you feel.

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Read More: Misc., Writing Tips