When someone asks me this question there is immediately a tornado of thoughts and images that swirl around in my mind. I can see images of scenes I have read from my own list of favorite books...scenes that I am still in love with and could almost recite verbatim. I can reach out and touch the character I've created in my mind as I console a broken heart or help her up after she's been knocked down.
I feel the tragedies I write.
If they stay inside me, they will eat me alive. If I keep them in, I would be cheating someone out of living that story as they turn the pages of one of my novels. Sometimes living someone else's story for a moment can bring enlightenment to your own life that you wouldn't have gathered anywhere else.
I wasn't an avid reader until I was an adult. I was a gifted student and did well in school and I am sad to say, I got by with Cliff's Notes and movies. Maybe no one challenged me as much as they should have. I hated reading when someone ELSE was choosing what I would bury my nose in. So, I read the mini-version, watched the movie, wrote the paper or took the test and then filed it away in "things I will never need to revisit."
I have always been a storyteller. I have lived my whole life with people begging me to "tell that story again!" And with each re-telling, I add more and more glitz and glam...which is why no one ever gets tired of hearing that same story...it's not always exactly the same. I love to hold people's attention while at the same time I don't enjoy being the center of attention. My stories allow me to entertain while drawing attention to something other than myself. The attention goes to the characters within the stories I am telling.
When I write, things I've lived through, longed for, loved and hated make their way into my books. Call it cheap therapy, but sometimes when I hand my own experiences to the characters in my books I can translate them in a way I could not if I was simply looking at them from my own point of view. Looking at the same heartache and pain through someone else's eyes brings a world of different insights and I love that.
In addition to that, I can change the outcome as I see fit. In my latest novel that's making its rounds, IN TOO DEEP, there is a scene that I would give my left arm to go back in time and have play out in real life. Since I have not yet discovered time travel, I watched it play out moment by moment as I wrote it and now I can revisit it over and over and over as many times as I want to see that fist meet that jaw!
So, why do I write?
I write for the same reason people do drugs...it fills a void in my soul!
So, peace out writer peeps! It's time for me to go fill a void!
I feel the tragedies I write.
If they stay inside me, they will eat me alive. If I keep them in, I would be cheating someone out of living that story as they turn the pages of one of my novels. Sometimes living someone else's story for a moment can bring enlightenment to your own life that you wouldn't have gathered anywhere else.
I wasn't an avid reader until I was an adult. I was a gifted student and did well in school and I am sad to say, I got by with Cliff's Notes and movies. Maybe no one challenged me as much as they should have. I hated reading when someone ELSE was choosing what I would bury my nose in. So, I read the mini-version, watched the movie, wrote the paper or took the test and then filed it away in "things I will never need to revisit."
I have always been a storyteller. I have lived my whole life with people begging me to "tell that story again!" And with each re-telling, I add more and more glitz and glam...which is why no one ever gets tired of hearing that same story...it's not always exactly the same. I love to hold people's attention while at the same time I don't enjoy being the center of attention. My stories allow me to entertain while drawing attention to something other than myself. The attention goes to the characters within the stories I am telling.
When I write, things I've lived through, longed for, loved and hated make their way into my books. Call it cheap therapy, but sometimes when I hand my own experiences to the characters in my books I can translate them in a way I could not if I was simply looking at them from my own point of view. Looking at the same heartache and pain through someone else's eyes brings a world of different insights and I love that.
In addition to that, I can change the outcome as I see fit. In my latest novel that's making its rounds, IN TOO DEEP, there is a scene that I would give my left arm to go back in time and have play out in real life. Since I have not yet discovered time travel, I watched it play out moment by moment as I wrote it and now I can revisit it over and over and over as many times as I want to see that fist meet that jaw!
So, why do I write?
I write for the same reason people do drugs...it fills a void in my soul!
So, peace out writer peeps! It's time for me to go fill a void!
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