We Literary Grunts

Another day in the life of a non-glamorous literary grunt.

I’m adding a new category to the blogroll to capture these. It’s my hope to dispel any weird ideas people have about what a glamorous writer’s life looks like. My god, would I have chosen the writer life if I’d known about these before? Well, likely, yes. I’m not sure I really had a complete choice in the matter as the life seems to choose you, really. Still, it would have been nice to know ahead of time what these days might look like.

​I’ll try to back link as many as I can, and use this category going forward to house #literarygrunt  #amwriting #inhalelifeexhalestory 

Then there are some days when you have to tackle the scene you’ve been dreading. You’ve put it off as long as you can. You know it’s going to wreck you to break a character that has become too real, too human. You know they’ll feel it, because you know what it feels like.

You know you can break them because you built their weakness into the arc. You know it will hurt because you’ve experienced that pain before. Pain you would never wish on anyone, not even someone you hate…certainly not on someone you love, even if they are fictitious.

Then you spend the evening afterward sitting in the bathtub sobbing. The water just wont stay hot enough to scald and numb. When the water goes cold you’ll sit on the floor of the hot shower and wonder why the fuck you ever wanted to be a writer, and why is your tea so salty? Oh, way to go, you cried in your tea.

Aftercare is important after these scenes. It’s psychologically taxing to put yourself in the headspace of both creating the break/inflicting the trauma, and writing the character who is simultaneously FEELING the break/trauma.

On days like today, I’m grateful to be single. It’s better that I can just do what I need to do and spare anyone the emotional waves. Scalding hot bath, lots of tissues, warm teas, lots of blankets, and a heating pad nest in bed to recover. (Good Scotch when I’m not on stupid diet).

Although I’m glad to not have to put anyone else through it, there are the animals to consider who camped at the bathroom door while I wept in the bubble bath. Dakota and Buttercup held space for me at a distance, and for that I was grateful.

The characters can’t evolve without the challenge. The arc cannot progress without the conflict. The more you try to avoid the hard stuff, the waterier your story will become. I don’t want a watery story…so some characters are going to have to bleed from the soul and then some.

Which unfortunately means, I bleed too.

​Just another day schlepping words into books.