Bleeding on Paper

Writing is an emotional experience. In my experience the more real emotion I invest into a piece of writing, the better it is. I don’t write anything I don’t care about. When I write I try and put myself in the headspace of my characters, figure out why they are the way they are. That’s why so often my characters become these fully formed people running around in my head. It’s also why so many writers are crazy.

A few weeks ago I submitted the first ten pages of a novel I’d written to @PaperBoxBooks. They were offering free critiques from their editing/publishing staff and I jumped on the chance to have some professionals go over my work! (Can I just make a note about how friggen nervous I was?! I could totally picture Simon Cowell clones telling me how awful my writing was while I tried to tell them how my friends and family thought I was brilliant.) I heard back from them really quickly and they liked it! They did have some suggestions which were very helpful. The problem? Then 10 pages I submitted were the entirety of what I’ve written! So now I actually have to finish it hehe.

For those not familiar with the story here’s a little snippet:

The girl in the backseat of the cab jumped as the phone rang again. She looked down at the broken screen wishing, not for the first time, that she could see who was calling.

“Hello?”  The cab driver, hearing the worry in his passenger’s voice, looked at her in the mirror.

She might have been pretty, it was hard to tell right now. Her brilliant red hair looked like it was pulled into a french braid; with all the pieces flying here and there he couldn’t be sure. Large dark-tinted rockstar glasses covered most of her face, the rest was very red, and a little swollen. He turned his eyes back to the road, the bruises on her chest and arms looked too much like they were caused from fingers that weren’t her own.

“Shalymar don’t han…” She snapped the phone closed, took several deep breaths and tried to focus on something steady outside the cab.

So that’s the first little bit, it’s not perfect but the idea is there. And perhaps you begin to understand my struggle with emotions as I write this story. Putting myself in that head space is hard. We all have horrible relationships in our past, some are worse than others. I pull on those for inspiration and that takes me back to a place that is hard.

Thankfully, it’s not as bad as it could be. I’ve dealt with the pain of those and they don’t trouble me, but going back to a place where they bothered me. Not easy! And it reminded me of one of my favorite writing quotes:

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed

~Ernest Hemmingway

That’s always been such a good explanation of writing to me. Anyways… I want to finish this story, but I have to balance it with the writing of something not quite so traumatic. I’m thinking… fantasy. Something magical, fantastical, something… not real. Reality is a nice place, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Not sure yet what form this fantasy is going to take, although it is beginning to come together in my brain. See, whenever I start a new story I just throw all of the ideas for it into my brain and let them sort themselves out. Then new characters will pop up and say hi and tell me about themselves. Stories will happen of their own accord, and all that’s left for me is to tell the tale.

So what’s your experience with writing particularly emotional pieces? Anyone else feel the need to balance them with other writing so as not to become completely depressed?

They say writers are crazy…

I say they aren’t wrong.