Writers aren't exactly people, they're a lot of people trying to be one person. F.Scott Fitzgerald

Thursday, September 15, 2011

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOUR STORY ENDS?

I love to write and I always have.Writing has been the one single dependable thing in my roller coaster life.Whatever chaos was going on,I could escape for a time in the fantasy world of my choosing by writing. I could lose myself in the world of words creating characters who were heroes and heroines,creating a world and lives for them and telling their story. For a time, I could lose myself in them and their world.I lived and breathed their life story and created a world just for them. I put them up the proverbial tree,threw rocks at them, then figured out how to get them down.
For a time I lived vicariously through them.I loved my characters and would become them.It was important to become them,live inside their heads and know them intimately.Who they were,what they wanted most in life,what was important to them.Know their inner most secrets,their weaknesses and their strengths.
They weren't just fictitious people to me. Each one became very real. It didn't matter whether they were villain or hero or if loved them or hated them, each one was important and had a reason to be there. They had a story to tell and each was important to the whole.
As each novel drew to a close and ended,I flt as though I had lost a vital part of myself.I had become so thoroughly enmeshed with the characters, the hero and heroine and their life,I actually felt I had lost the most vital and thrilling part of myself.The person I had become,the heroine of the story and the life I created for her and the hero was over.I had lost a vital part of my life and the person I had become because I had become the heroine and loved the hero with all my heart and soul,just as she did.
It was as though I had lost the real me and stepped into a strangers body and life. A life and person I no longer recognized nor wanted as my own.I wanted the person I had become after so many months.I wanted to be that person and live the life I created for her. I wanted the man who was the love of her( my) life back.I wanted their life,their passionate love for each other,even their arguments and separations,which had become more real to me than my own life back. I was not ready for this thrilling surrogate life to end.
Maybe all writers don't get so caught up in their story,but I am willing to bet many of us do.
Well,I suppose you are wondering,how did I resolve my disorientation,heartache, grieving for that lost life and longing for the deep love and passions of my hero and heroine ?
Why I did what any writer who create and fall in love with new worlds and characters to inhabit those worlds do. I started a new book with the same characters.
We writers are gluttons for punishment or we probably wouldn't be writers!

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