“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
This old piece of sales advice holds true for authors. Your readers want authentic feeling, and human beings have amazingly good crap detectors. If you find yourself writing without caring, just stop. Either find your genuine feelings about your topic, or find another topic.
I spent a lot of my life discounting the value and the meaning of emotions. My father’s frequent rebuke to my mother was, “You are not being logical; you’re just being emotional.” I should have gotten a clue about a certain lack of consistency when he shouted those words at the top of his lungs, sometimes while breaking furniture… but what stuck with me for a very long time were his words.
I’ve learned in recent years that, while it is still a good idea to not be led by my emotions, they have a lot of information to offer me. The more I understand my emotions as an important part of all that is me, the wholer I get.
I shoot for congruence, for integrity; for being the same inside and out. And I believe my readers can tell when I am not in harmony with what I am writing. My shorthand for describing that desired state is “caring.”
Care. And if you don’t or can’t, change something.
