Falling in Love...Again!

I'm actually writing this ahead of time as I have a crazy morning ahead of me. Two hour drive before my muscle biopsy. I have waited thirty years for this procedures and the answers it will bring, so I am nervous. I need to be focused in the morning. You won't be reading it till I'm on my way to the hospital, but nonetheless, it's being written now. :)




I've come a tremendous way in Impeccable today. Far more than I ever could have expected. And as usual, I went to my default: looking at pictures. I'm a very visual person. I found two new pics of the actress I have in mind for Alex, and it was as if I was Carol falling in love with her all over again. These pictures are stunning. This woman is breath-taking. It was a moment. As if I wasn't driven enough, seeing those pictures made me want to write any more. I had to write for that beautiful woman.




So, I did. A few thousand words later, I am extremely happy with my progress, and this book.




If those pictures didn't cause me to fall in love with Alex again, I'd be in some serious trouble. I look at Carol and I see myself. I can look in the mirror a million times a day. That does not bring inspiration. Love, devotion, pain, anger - EMOTIONS are inspiration. Falling in love with Alex again made this book real, and it made her real.





I think that people often wonder about the imaginary friends we writers have. No one can see or hear them, except us. We are the only ones who hear their voices, feel their emotions, know their dreams. We're the only ones who know they exist, until their story is finally in print. But they're real. They are extensions of ourselves. If they're not, then there is no story. If you feel no love, no hatred, no anger, no pain, then your book has no spine. Literally. We, as humans, are emotionally driven creatures. We need those emotions to understand the world around us. We need those emotions to ooze from our words and touch our readers. Our emotional attatchments to our characters must be real. Our characters must be real, otherwise our story will not be real. If our story is not real, then these are nothing more than meaningless words and letters on paper or on a screen.





Have you ever seen a foreign language like Russian or Greek? The symbols are very foreign to us, but you know they must mean something, right? Well, if there is no emotion or reality behind our characters and stories, all we're looking at are foreign symbols that make no sense to us. That is a world I do not want to live in! I want to know. I want to understand. I want to feel. And I want you to do the same.





And so, I leave you with this: a good book is not one that uses fancy, flowery language. A good book is one that makes you sweat; it makes you cry; it makes you scream; it pisses you off; it makes you laugh; it makes you think about long after you have closed it. That means it was real, and it was good.

Happy reading! ;)