A Writer’s Reality: Guest Post!

Please welcome Emmy from the blog, Love Woke Me Up This Morning. Emmy is a fiction writer and NaNoWriMo participant. Below, Emmy discusses her perspective on the role of a writer’s sanity, or lack thereof.

 

I sat at the table hunched over my laptop and sipped on my pumpkin spice latte, when suddenly; a face appeared at my shoulder.

“What are you working on?” he asked. It was one of the baristas at the local Starbucks where I was typing, who had now become a friend since I was there so often.

“I’m doing something called National Novel Writing Month,” I explained. “In the month of November you have to write a 50,000 word novel by the 30th.”

He looked at me like I had three heads.

“I’m crazy,” I told him, as if I was explaining that I had some form of strange disease that he didn’t understand.

“Yeah, you are,” he said, then went back to work.

Thus the life of a writer- particularly a writer during National Novel Writing Month. Although, if you are an avid writer like I am… 50,000 words is probably one of the least insane things you do.

For example: when I’m brainstorming and envisioning a scene in my head I tend to walk in circles around the house muttering to myself so I can get a better picture.

Or I have full out conversations with my characters in my mind so I can understand them better, and therefore write about them more accurately. I talk with my family and friends about my story and characters as though they are real people with real things happening to them – which is really crazy since most of my stories involve fairies, elves, and unicorns.

Yes… I think it’s fair to say that writers are a little bit crazy. Who in their right mind would dive into an imaginary world, only to have to tear it to shreds and let other people criticize it over and over again? What sane person would stay up all hours of the night so they could get a single sentence just right? We are basically like the schizophrenics only without the medications and doctors to help us sort the people in our heads.

Something I have learned though is that… reality is highly overrated. In fact, without writing, many of us would not be able to handle reality.

Writing makes sense of reality.

Writing helps us to not go crazy.

The characters we create reflect what we know of the world, or point us in the direction of what we wish the world was really like.

The stories we write are a part of our hearts and share who we really are.

So go – be insane. Write your story and let the baristas at the coffee shop give you strange looks. Talk to your characters all you want.

Because as writers – that is our reality.

 

Mother Theresa once said: “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”  Emmy is a city girl living in a small town trying to live and learn those words. Because despite what the title of her blog might lead you to think – more often than not she doesn’t remember that it is Love that wakes her up every morning. So grab a cup of coffee (or your preferred beverage of choice) and come along for the journey. She blogs at: www.lovewokemeupthismorning.com. You can also find Emmy on Twitter and Facebook.

Five FREE eBooks on Writing

So here are some Kindle books on writing… FOR FREE. I don’t have a Kindle—yet— but I thought I’d check out the Kindle app for my Mac. Turns out it’s a pretty awesome app… for Mac OS 10.6 or higher. Guess what I have? Version 10.5.8.

So anyway, I thought I’d pass along the freebies to you guys.