Then the cat started attacking, wanting hugs, Yahoo started pinging, the daughter started talking, business e-mail kept popping up, until finally I just blew up all over everyone. And now I need to apologize to everyone. So much for putting headphones on to cut off the world. :(
When I write, I am very much inside the character, and this was tough and ugly and painful. I was feeling every bit of it. To reach the emotional core of a character requires a writer to lower all her own barriers to places that are uncomfortable to visit. It means feeling things we don't like, and putting them into words.
By the time I finished, my shoulders ached from tension. Backing out of the black moment was hard, and it's lingering with me still. I'll strew the apologies around now to everyone I snapped at, but I'm glad to say my family knows these moments and they're all infinitely forgiving.
I don't go nuts like this often, but I sure did today. Maybe because I was deep inside some ugly feelings and they spilled over. Or maybe because I was desperate to get the scene out of me before it got lost in an interruption.
Whichever it was, the scene is written. And now I can go patch things up.
Life with a writer must surely be hell sometimes. I know it can be hell being one.
Hugs,
Rachel
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