What do you feel when you write?

[Miss_Misaki]

Maybe this is a common question; I've never seen it asked before, but that doesn't always mean anything, lol.

I think we can all agree that we enjoy writing. If we can't, then some of us are just really into frustration and pain, and we shall put them aside for now, lol. For those of us who DO enjoy writing, I want to know what you feel and what you think during the writing process. Specifically, when you're writing that first draft - the first free flow of your idea, unhindered and uninhibited. Do you feel tense? Relaxed? Moody? Do you forget everything around you and actually become your story... simply recording the events as they happen in your own psyche?

As for myself, I am an immersionist (I have created this word simply to label the way I write, and the way I suspect many others do as well). I become totally immersed in what I'm writing, and I feel what my characters feel, see what my characters see, and do what my characters do (in my own mind, but not physically). However, at any given time, I am excited, anxious, and elated all at once. If at some point I remove myself from this frame of mind and begin to think consciously again, I don't enjoy myself as much, but I get more of an investment into a richer experience down the road, so I see it as taking the bad with the good.

I enjoy other creative hobbies, such as drawing, painting, digital animation, and a host of other arts and crafts I can't list now for lack of sleep and recollective capacity. However, virtually none of them give me the "high" that I get from creating stories and living them through writing. Reading books takes me very close, as I experience similar effects when I'm immersed in someone else's story, but it's not exactly the same. The characters aren't my characters, so I can't connect with them as well. I love writing, even if I don't feel confident that I'm very good at it. To me, that's the only incentive I need to keep doing it.

 

[oggbashan]

What I feel can be contradictory.

I wrote one of my darkest pieces, Donna, when feeling fairly relaxed and enjoying life. I don't think I could have written it when I was in the middle of the anger and frustration that I expressed in that story.

So perhaps I'm writing remembered emotion and I can write when that experience or acquired knowledge is distant enough to be crystallised into words.

As I'm actually writing I have a sense of being driven to complete the story, or at least a significant part of the story, before the impetus fades. When the story is flowing I can write several thousand words in one session. When it's not flowing I can struggle to complete a couple of hundred and I'll use my time better at editing.

It takes me a long time to re-start a stalled story or to write a sequel/continuation of an existing story. I have to read and re-read what I had already posted before I can recapture the sense of the characters and what they would do, how they would react, in the new scenario. I need at least half a day to get ready to continue an old story. I rarely get that long a time uninterrupted by my other activities.

Og

 

[NoJo]

I can't tell you but I know it's mine

 

[ShivanDragon00]

stealing a page from your book Misaki, ill create my own term to describe what I am. I'm a creationist. I create my stories, the characters, the scenarios and situations much like a little kid will create a tower out of blocks (which i did my share of as well as a kid lol) I build, and watch as it is being built. I am the puppet master of my creations, sometimes i can sympathize with them and their situations but am unable to actually put myself in their shoes.

Ogg, you bring up an intesting point about having trouble rekindling a story once its stalled out. I can start a story and get bored with it a few pages in, needing to find something else to do, either a new idea pops in my head or life gets in the way and something else takes my attention , guess thats the ADD in me....but i usually end up coming back to them at some point. For instance i had a story that i knew the middle part of, but couldnt get the intro right. So i wrote out what i had, started it in the middle and left it for a while, then one day out of nowhere i had an idea bout it...i was like 'hey! yeah, thats a good way to start that one' ...its strange, guess it goes to show you just how the mind can work lol

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I feel nothing much beyond satisfaction, if the words and structure work. That's because I have the MDs natural talent for dissociating from what she does. I know from experience that certain events usually cause strong emotional reactions in people, but I feel nothing while I write them.

 

[Dragonlipz]

The emotions I feel as I write vary - some of my best was written while I was in the grip of blind passion - only afterward could I read it and appreciate my own mindset.

 

[DeeZire]

What do you see when you turn out the light?

I can't tell you but I know it's mine

I would like to thank S J for the astute quote, which I have amended with the line that precedes it.

Immersionist works for me. The problem arises when I'm proof reading the story days or weeks later and the prose does not immerse me in the story. Perhaps it's a mood thing, or biorhythms or whatever. I can easily get immersed in working on music, or other things, and not write at all for a while. Then I get caught up in a new story idea, and days go by when I'm lost in that other world. I've even blown off clients to work on a story. I think I'm a binge writer. Shame on me.

 

[sr71plt]

What do I feel? For starters, the computer keys.

Probably more important is what I don't feel. I'm not all that creative when I'm pressed with a deadline and am trying to force the writing. So, I don't usually feel pressured when I write. I do better when the need to write builds up and magically intersects with the opportunity to write. After that, I'm pretty much oblivious to feeling until I reach the end of what I'm writing.

 

[Elianna]

I do and don't write well under demand. When I write fiction... I can't do with too much pressure because I get so stressed out that I can't imagine and can't go to the place my characters exist. Writing has always been an extent of my imagination, and I find that I have to be feeling certain emotions in order to write. I also "experience" my character's feelings like watching a movie, so I get that feeling of excitment at the times the book gets exciting and so forth. Lately I have been under a great deal of stress and pressure to produce and so I am finding that I am excelling at a different type of writing...
Currently I have been writing research and have been writing reports and studies. When writing for grants, or any kind of research-based writing, the pressure rules. I find myself becoming precise, detailed, driven, and a "writing machine" with intent and purpose. It becomes elating in its own way and I am driven by the pressure of the deadline.

 

[sr71plt]

I do and don't write well under demand. When I write fiction... I can't do with too much pressure because I get so stressed out that I can't imagine and can't go to the place my characters exist. Writing has always been an extent of my imagination, and I find that I have to be feeling certain emotions in order to write. I also "experience" my character's feelings like watching a movie, so I get that feeling of excitment at the times the book gets exciting and so forth. Lately I have been under a great deal of stress and pressure to produce and so I am finding that I am excelling at a different type of writing...
Currently I have been writing research and have been writing reports and studies. When writing for grants, or any kind of research-based writing, the pressure rules. I find myself becoming precise, detailed, driven, and a "writing machine" with intent and purpose. It becomes elating in its own way and I am driven by the pressure of the deadline.

Agreed. I had to write concisely and correctly on crisis events on a "ten-minutes-ago" deadline for decades. So, definitely a split on that for me between writing fiction and nonfiction.

 

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

I feel inspired. I only write when inspired. I never stare at a blank page wondering what I'm going to write. I already have the story mapped out in my mind.

It could be anything that inspires me, a word or an image.

I feel good when I'm writing. Then, when the inspiration stops, I stop. Most times when I return to it that night or the next morning, the inspiration is there, but not like the flood that comes with the first rewrite.

For me, the real question is what do I feel when I'm not writing...I feel like writing (lol).

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm always paying attention to what it sounds like, so I'm very focused, always fighting with the fucking sentences.

Then sometimes it starts to flow and it's ecstatic, like playing music or having sex. But other times it's terribly hard, like pulling teeth.

You go through the teeth-pulling parts to get to the having-sex parts.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DOC

For me writing seems to get easier with time.

I scavenge old newspapers and books for wonderful material I use as inlays. None of this material you could invent, but all of it was real. Like the drunk who slouched around town with a rattlesnake draped across his shoulder. Or the 10 year old wood carter who smoked cigarettes and wore spurs on his bare feet. Or the woman with the cut throat, running down the street, her head falling further and further backward off her neck until she collapsed dead.

The trick is to make a story out of it.

 

[sr71plt]

DOC

For me writing seems to get easier with time.

Especially when you can just say you do it and not actually do it.

 

[CeriseNoire]

I feel happy and relaxed. I always have a million thoughts racing through my mind, and writing (creatively) seems to slow it all down. I just wish I had more time to sit and write.

 

[Katyusha]

Do you forget everything around you and actually become your story... simply recording the events as they happen in your own psyche?

This is me. An example: the story I did for NaNo has a tragic ending. The story is told from my main character's point of view and I cried as I put down her thoughts and feelings when she first found out what happened; I *was* her and those were *my* thoughts and feelings. Or so it was like. It's the same no matter what I'm writing.

 

[sr71plt]

This is me. An example: the story I did for NaNo has a tragic ending. The story is told from my main character's point of view and I cried as I put down her thoughts and feelings when she first found out what happened; I *was* her and those were *my* thoughts and feelings. Or so it was like. It's the same no matter what I'm writing.

I can see this. There are stories of mine that I can't read at book readings/signings, because, even though I've given completely new spins on them, there are nuggets of personal connections in them that I choke up on when I get to those parts.

 

[slyc_willie]

This is me. An example: the story I did for NaNo has a tragic ending. The story is told from my main character's point of view and I cried as I put down her thoughts and feelings when she first found out what happened; I *was* her and those were *my* thoughts and feelings. Or so it was like. It's the same no matter what I'm writing.

Definitely. I get into my stories to the point where I end up laughing, crying, getting angry at the villain or telling the main character "don't do it!" Yeah, I know I wrote the damn thing, but it still surprises me how much the characters directed the action. Most of the time, it works, and I'm satisfied with the story.

If there's anything I don't feel, it's ambivalence.