When Your Writing Gives Back

In the past when I have met other authors/writers, I’ve always enjoyed asking them about their experiences. Now, not in an interview sort of way but I ask questions on a more personal level. Many writers will have felt this, but you achieve strange sensations from different stages of the writing process. And as much as I love writing, I do actually enjoy editing. Or rather, the re-visiting of a novel you created.

The shaping of a scene is always dictated by the state of mind you are in at the time. And in the process of editing, we get to revisit those spots of time. But there are time where you forget exactly what you were thinking. When re-reading my novel for the first time (and I’m talking about the dirty draft riddled with things that make me question where my head was at), I find myself forgetting so much. You become the reader and you do actually question how you came up with that one sentence or that image.

A stranger sensation, I find, is when a novel you wrote in the past, holds a larger significance to you now, than it did when you wrote it. There are many notions presented my heroine in my current novel, Deceive Me in Ireland, that hold such relevance to me at this stage in my life. It’s as if my muse knew then that one day, I would need to take my own character’s advice and in a way, as I mesh out my own opinions and beliefs, I edit them into the original story, strengthening character and situation.

The relevance of my writing and the issue raise are startling, but it really does help when it comes to keeping a levelled head haha. But I wondered, have any other writers experienced this? It’s been a year since I finished the draft for Deceive Me in Ireland. I let my character rest. I moved on and wrote another novel. Only to return with so much to offer due to new life experiences and expectations.

So there you have it. For my readers, you get a little sense of just how important my writing is to me. I rely on it just as much as you are relying on me to present you with the next instalment of my Irish series so that you might escape just as I do. J And writers, you might find yourself looking at your writing differently. Or maybe you’ve already experienced how sometimes, a story you created, can give back.

I guess, that might be what happens when you don’t write from experience. But rather observation J