90 Day Writing Challenge week 4

Time for my weekly check-in. I did miss one day, last week. Sunday I had to kill off a beloved character, and writing a death scene from the POV of the character about to die is.... rough. But even harder was watching his girlfriend have a nervous breakdown afterwards. I tried to write that scene on Monday, but didn't get very far. And then Tuesday, I just couldn't seem to make myself do it at all. (Or maybe I have that reversed. I can't even remember, anymore.) I did finally get through it on Wednesday, crying like a baby the entire time. What made it that much more interesting is that I was WATCHING it happen. I used a POV character other than the one having the nervous breakdown so we get to see it from the outside. I think that in some ways, that may have made it even more heartbreaking. Poor William had no idea what was going on, and could only sit there and watch it all go down. I think it works much better this way than it would have from her POV. Anyway, that's what I accomplished, this week. Word count wise, I'm so far behind that updating my word count just makes me sad, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up.

So, this week's check-in is supposed to be about why I write. (Even though some of the others are confusing me by writing next week's blog post this week...) Ahem. Anyway... I write because I can't not write. It sounds simplistic, but there it is. I write because for all that I'm a procrastinator from Hades, I feel bad when I don't. I am in love with these characters, and with their stories. They make me laugh and cry and want to throw things. But mostly, they make me NEED to tell their story. Because it's the only way to get the voices in my head to shut up for a few minutes.

Okay, I sounded schizophrenic with that last sentence, but I think that maybe all writers are a bit schizophrenic. After all, we all have all these other people living inside our heads, telling us their stories so that we can share them with the world.

Okay, next week's check-in will be longer, because I get to talk about some of my favourite characters. And meanwhile, on Wednesday I'll hopefully remember one of the blog posts that were writing themselves in my head, yesterday.