It is Monday morning and thus begins another week of hardcore Nano-ing. Last week I wrote over 12k words, taking the weekend off to enjoy my family and get swept up in another of Sarah MacLean’s historical romances, this one an adult romance (that girl can write!).
Something that helped me get my writing accomplished last week was taking a Twitter/Blog break Thursday and Friday . . .well and the rest of the weekend, too, but I normally try to do that anyway. It is so hard to find that balance between finding and reading inspirational and motivational blog posts, making and maintaining writer friendships in the blogosphere, and actually getting the writing time in that is the reason for it all. But, I did take the break and got my writing done. Despite one other hiccup.
Friday’s writing time took forever. The reason? I had to write a heartbreak scene for the third person in my story’s love triangle. I never expected to care so much about this character or his pain while I was plotting this book, but last week the writing took over. He demanded a different story be told of him, and I loved the resulting relationship . . . up until it was time to end it. Oh!!! It was almost impossible to write.
I suffer from EXTREME Sympathy pains. Like, if I am watching a movie, reading a book, or listening to someone tell me a story where they were injured or embarrassed or hurt or anything, I have a physical reaction. My stomach gets an acute pain, I curl into myself and wince as if I was the one suffering. It is one of the major reasons I can’t watch horror flicks and why I sometimes watch action movies through the slats in my fingers, and why I have to pace or curl into a ball while watching The Ultimate Fighter with my husband.
So, imagine how much worse it is to INFLICT the pain on my poor characters! It hurt me to hurt them, and I felt wretched. But, in the end, a better story was told because of it, and it is over . . . well at least until I have to revise it (shudder).
Do you have a hard time writing emotional scenes in your own projects? How do you get through it?
Before I head off into the next scene of my project, I will leave you with a few links I planned on sharing last Thursday, along with a few from this morning. Hope you enjoy them!
- Andrea Cremer shared a timely post on How I Revise, something I’ll be heading into in the next few weeks
- Writing Dialogue in a story–12 cool secrets for writing better story dialogue
- More on Dynamic Dialogue from Writing Without the Drama
- The Teners have a great post on Promoting, something to think about for the future
- Michelle Hodkin’s fabulous post on The Secret to Getting Published is definitely worth a read
- Help I Need A Publisher! has An Exhaustive List of Writerly Resources–and they ain’t lying!! SHEESH!
- Myra McEntire discusses social networking and writing deadlines in Twitter: It’s Not You, It’s Me
- Operation Awesome has an awesome guest post by Roni Loren on What Makes Romance Awesome
- Don’t Miss Elana Johnson’s Pay It Forward with Partials! Contest . . . and be sure to follow the links to the author awesome bloggers also doing the contest!
- Mary Kole tackles a question I asked a few weeks ago on Contemporary YA and how it fits in today’s marketplace. Play Up The Romance!
- Finally, Writer Unboxed has a great post on Archetypes this morning
Happy Writing Everyone!!!
