The Heavy Dark Moments

wish my window looked like this

A random Saturday, bright colorless January light filtering through the windows before it sleeps and wakes again as February. A late lunch of homemade chicken tortilla soup, a Reese's cup, and the keyboard. That's where I am, at the moment. Writers never really take breaks, you know. Stolen moments, dog naps - they call to us.

I wish writing a book happened as quickly as reading a book. If it's enthralling enough, and there's time, you can devour a four-hundred page book in a day. But the writing takes so, so much longer. And scenes that we read in minutes often take days to finish at the computer. The downside is that you have to stay in that book moment for those days, mentally. Not all the time, not while watching TV or going for a walk, but when you sit down to write, you're back in that moment. And sometimes, as is the case with this project, there are the heavy dark moments of the story that you have to live inside for days. And it doesn't matter that you as the writer aren't living this moment; your greatest weapon as an artist is empathy, feeling deeply for the characters in a way that allows you to project it in your work. If what you wrote made you shudder, chances are your audience will shudder, too. That's the goal.

So...sorry in advance if those dark parts make you shudder. Going through the dark makes the bright spots all the more radiant, the connections deeper, the victories more worthwhile.