RHYS: It's been around one hundred degrees all this week and I've been feeling cold all the time. No, I don't have a rare disease. I am not wasting away. I'm in the middle of writing a book that takes place at Christmastime on snowy Dartmoor in England. So most of my day is being spent tramping through snow, cheeks burning in the cold wind.
This has proved to me once again how very caught up in my stories I become. There have been times when my husband recoils in surprise when I snap at him for no reason. He can't even ask any longer "Is it your time of the month again?" I tried to analyse I could come up with no reason I was mad at him.... until I sat at the computer again and realized that my hero and heroine were locked in conflict and the hero was behaving very badly.
I go around feeling terrible when I have to kill someone I have come to like. I don't really see my heroine as my alter ego but I certainly have come to identify with her. I feel sick when she is sick and right now I'm bloody cold.
At a book club talk last night I confessed that I have never been able to murder a child in one of my books. I tried and couldn't do it. I have never been able to write too dark or violent. It's not in my nature.
So do tell, fellow Jungle Reds: how involved do you get in your stories? Is there a limit to the darkness to which you will go? If you are writing a particularly dark story, does it affect your life outside writing?
JAN: When I was writing Yesterday's Fatal, the second in the Hallie Ahern series, my writer's group wanted me to kill off Walter, a cab driver and friend who she linked up with at a 12-step program for Substance Abuse. It made a lot of sense for the plot, but I suffered real grief just thinking about his demise.I just couldn't do it. Walter?? He was her mentor, her rock. I agonized for this for days and then flat out refused. Walter lived.
DEBS: I've had to change the murderer in a book, because I found that although I'd plotted very carefully and all the pieces fit, when I got to the end of the books I just couldn't believe he did it. And I am sometimes blocked for ages when I have to kill a character I really like. Usually my inner dialogue goes like this. "---- has to die. Otherwise you have no book. It's a crime novel. People die in crime novels. If you don't kill ----, you will not have a BOOK! So get the hell on with it!" But I don't like it.
I cry when sad things happen. I'm moody and cranky when things are not going well for my characters. And at the moment, I'm having climatic split personality, as my back story is set in south London in August, while the present day story is set in London in freezing January. Dallas should be giving me lots of inspiration for the HOT part.
HALLIE: We all know that all books are so personal, even when they're not. We're always channel some experience, relationship that kicks up real sensations and emotions. I had a particularly wrenching time writing the scene where the main character Ivy in NEVER TELL A LIE gives birth to her baby. It brought back so many memories. And of course, my worst fear was that something would go wrong--same with my character. I once heard great advice: write your fears. I was certainly doing that.
ROBERTA: The most terrible time for me was when I got the news (after five mysteries featuring aspiring golfer Cassie Burdette) that the publisher did not intend to continue my first series. Cassie started out as a neurotic, hard-drinking young woman who made all kinds of poor choices that had bad effects on her life and her golf aspirations. I dragged her kicking and screaming into therapy and things were definitely beginning to look up, both personally and professionally. So leaving her behind was like a little death with all the accompanying mourning. We had come so far together! Now of course with much time passing, I can see that it was time to let her go--let her live her own life with me watching over it every minute. I understand she's engaged and is playing very well on the LPGA tour:).
HANK: Roberta, that's so nice to hear about Cassie! I wondered, of course.
As for me, if I don't make myself cry when I write the emotional parts, why would I think the readers will cry? I get so happy when I cry, or get goosebumps when my characters say just the right thing. It means--it's working.
JULIA: Oh, my, yes. I have a scene in OUT OF THE DEEP I CRY where a woman (in the 1920s) loses several of her children to diphtheria. I was sobbing so hard when I wrote that I couldn't see my computer screen.
Deb, I also have the odd imaginary climate control, where I feel cold during the many, many
times I'm writing about the Adirondacks' harsh winters. The good thing is, I do lots of my work in the summer, and as neither my house nor the university library has air conditioning, a chill up my back is quite welcome!
ROSEMARY: Funny, I just watched Stranger Than Fiction tonight. I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but let's just say this post was eerily apropos!
It isn't usually the deaths in my books that trouble me (what does THAT say...) at least not in the first four books, it's the duplicity. I don't really think anyone I know would murder someone but there are some unlikeable characters - particularly in my WIP, which is not a Paula Holliday book. I've started to look at some of the people around me in a whole new light.
I haven't cried when reading or writing one of my own books - I save that for when I read my royalty statements (little joke)but I have scared myself a few times. Not with graphic details, which I can't see myself ever writing, just the unexpected - the good guy who's not all good, the bad guy who surprises you.
RHYS: So fellow writers--fess up about how involved you get with your own stories, and dear readers--do you love books that touch you emotionally, make you cry?
This has proved to me once again how very caught up in my stories I become. There have been times when my husband recoils in surprise when I snap at him for no reason. He can't even ask any longer "Is it your time of the month again?" I tried to analyse I could come up with no reason I was mad at him.... until I sat at the computer again and realized that my hero and heroine were locked in conflict and the hero was behaving very badly.
I go around feeling terrible when I have to kill someone I have come to like. I don't really see my heroine as my alter ego but I certainly have come to identify with her. I feel sick when she is sick and right now I'm bloody cold.
At a book club talk last night I confessed that I have never been able to murder a child in one of my books. I tried and couldn't do it. I have never been able to write too dark or violent. It's not in my nature.
So do tell, fellow Jungle Reds: how involved do you get in your stories? Is there a limit to the darkness to which you will go? If you are writing a particularly dark story, does it affect your life outside writing?
JAN: When I was writing Yesterday's Fatal, the second in the Hallie Ahern series, my writer's group wanted me to kill off Walter, a cab driver and friend who she linked up with at a 12-step program for Substance Abuse. It made a lot of sense for the plot, but I suffered real grief just thinking about his demise.I just couldn't do it. Walter?? He was her mentor, her rock. I agonized for this for days and then flat out refused. Walter lived.
DEBS: I've had to change the murderer in a book, because I found that although I'd plotted very carefully and all the pieces fit, when I got to the end of the books I just couldn't believe he did it. And I am sometimes blocked for ages when I have to kill a character I really like. Usually my inner dialogue goes like this. "---- has to die. Otherwise you have no book. It's a crime novel. People die in crime novels. If you don't kill ----, you will not have a BOOK! So get the hell on with it!" But I don't like it.
I cry when sad things happen. I'm moody and cranky when things are not going well for my characters. And at the moment, I'm having climatic split personality, as my back story is set in south London in August, while the present day story is set in London in freezing January. Dallas should be giving me lots of inspiration for the HOT part.
HALLIE: We all know that all books are so personal, even when they're not. We're always channel some experience, relationship that kicks up real sensations and emotions. I had a particularly wrenching time writing the scene where the main character Ivy in NEVER TELL A LIE gives birth to her baby. It brought back so many memories. And of course, my worst fear was that something would go wrong--same with my character. I once heard great advice: write your fears. I was certainly doing that.
ROBERTA: The most terrible time for me was when I got the news (after five mysteries featuring aspiring golfer Cassie Burdette) that the publisher did not intend to continue my first series. Cassie started out as a neurotic, hard-drinking young woman who made all kinds of poor choices that had bad effects on her life and her golf aspirations. I dragged her kicking and screaming into therapy and things were definitely beginning to look up, both personally and professionally. So leaving her behind was like a little death with all the accompanying mourning. We had come so far together! Now of course with much time passing, I can see that it was time to let her go--let her live her own life with me watching over it every minute. I understand she's engaged and is playing very well on the LPGA tour:).
HANK: Roberta, that's so nice to hear about Cassie! I wondered, of course.
As for me, if I don't make myself cry when I write the emotional parts, why would I think the readers will cry? I get so happy when I cry, or get goosebumps when my characters say just the right thing. It means--it's working.
JULIA: Oh, my, yes. I have a scene in OUT OF THE DEEP I CRY where a woman (in the 1920s) loses several of her children to diphtheria. I was sobbing so hard when I wrote that I couldn't see my computer screen.
Deb, I also have the odd imaginary climate control, where I feel cold during the many, many
times I'm writing about the Adirondacks' harsh winters. The good thing is, I do lots of my work in the summer, and as neither my house nor the university library has air conditioning, a chill up my back is quite welcome!ROSEMARY: Funny, I just watched Stranger Than Fiction tonight. I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but let's just say this post was eerily apropos!
It isn't usually the deaths in my books that trouble me (what does THAT say...) at least not in the first four books, it's the duplicity. I don't really think anyone I know would murder someone but there are some unlikeable characters - particularly in my WIP, which is not a Paula Holliday book. I've started to look at some of the people around me in a whole new light.
I haven't cried when reading or writing one of my own books - I save that for when I read my royalty statements (little joke)but I have scared myself a few times. Not with graphic details, which I can't see myself ever writing, just the unexpected - the good guy who's not all good, the bad guy who surprises you.
RHYS: So fellow writers--fess up about how involved you get with your own stories, and dear readers--do you love books that touch you emotionally, make you cry?
