Great point. I work with a lot of characters, and it makes me feel a little schizoid in real life. The intuitive and empathic effort it takes to write a great character from the inside out is exhausting. It's like being a skin-changer, maybe? There's me, but as I go about my life, there are other voices, reactions, and choices in my imagination as my characters jostle around inside my brain. It doesn't matter if I'm writing or not. They even come into my dreams.
Now that I read that back to myself, it sounds a little nuts. Oh, well! I probably am a little nuts!
It's not just you!! This happens to me, too. Writing personal essays for the blog doesn't drain me too badly. That's just a weekly play session. Publishing my fiction serially here is OK. It's already written, of course, I'm just editing and getting it into Substack. But raw writing in my fantasy series? Oh, boy. I love it. I'm transported. By the time I come back to the "real" world in order to eat or drink or pee, I'm completely exhausted. All that's left is enough to sit in the sun with a good book or play solitaire. That's part of what makes it so hard to fit writing into my life between work and all the rest. I know it's going to take everything I have. But it's part of why I love it, too. It takes everything I have, all the best I am, the real stuff, not my ability to take care of house, cats, dishes, laundry, etc. None of that is who I am. The writing is who I am.
Very much the same for me. WIth fiction especially, I wonder whether having to hold multiple fictional places AND characters in your head is a contributing factor? A fiction writer is essentially juggling several personalities in their head during a writing session, as well as conjuring into being locations which otherwise wouldn't exist. That *sounds* tiring now that I've written it. :)
And that's before you get into the more technical effort of the craft generally.
Wow, that's exactly how I'd describe it! Thanks for the confirmation. :) Took me SO long to realize it was just how I was while I was writing. I don't know if I would have figured that out if I hadn't taken so much time away. :)
I suspect no matter what we do -- put the writing down, pick it up, journal for our eyes only, write nonfiction, write fiction, get stuck, beat ourselves up for not writing, get sidetracked into other parts of our lives, we're fueling our writing. We always go back. Even years later, as you've just discovered, after emotional trauma and wounds and terrible events which temporarily derailed and distracted us, we go back and put words on the page. Because we're writers. We have to. It's who we are. Reading you and others has made me realize I'm not alone. We're all the same tribe. Thanks for writing! I'm reading.
Great point. I work with a lot of characters, and it makes me feel a little schizoid in real life. The intuitive and empathic effort it takes to write a great character from the inside out is exhausting. It's like being a skin-changer, maybe? There's me, but as I go about my life, there are other voices, reactions, and choices in my imagination as my characters jostle around inside my brain. It doesn't matter if I'm writing or not. They even come into my dreams.
Now that I read that back to myself, it sounds a little nuts. Oh, well! I probably am a little nuts!
It's not just you!! This happens to me, too. Writing personal essays for the blog doesn't drain me too badly. That's just a weekly play session. Publishing my fiction serially here is OK. It's already written, of course, I'm just editing and getting it into Substack. But raw writing in my fantasy series? Oh, boy. I love it. I'm transported. By the time I come back to the "real" world in order to eat or drink or pee, I'm completely exhausted. All that's left is enough to sit in the sun with a good book or play solitaire. That's part of what makes it so hard to fit writing into my life between work and all the rest. I know it's going to take everything I have. But it's part of why I love it, too. It takes everything I have, all the best I am, the real stuff, not my ability to take care of house, cats, dishes, laundry, etc. None of that is who I am. The writing is who I am.
Very much the same for me. WIth fiction especially, I wonder whether having to hold multiple fictional places AND characters in your head is a contributing factor? A fiction writer is essentially juggling several personalities in their head during a writing session, as well as conjuring into being locations which otherwise wouldn't exist. That *sounds* tiring now that I've written it. :)
And that's before you get into the more technical effort of the craft generally.
Wow, that's exactly how I'd describe it! Thanks for the confirmation. :) Took me SO long to realize it was just how I was while I was writing. I don't know if I would have figured that out if I hadn't taken so much time away. :)
I suspect no matter what we do -- put the writing down, pick it up, journal for our eyes only, write nonfiction, write fiction, get stuck, beat ourselves up for not writing, get sidetracked into other parts of our lives, we're fueling our writing. We always go back. Even years later, as you've just discovered, after emotional trauma and wounds and terrible events which temporarily derailed and distracted us, we go back and put words on the page. Because we're writers. We have to. It's who we are. Reading you and others has made me realize I'm not alone. We're all the same tribe. Thanks for writing! I'm reading.