Crying While Writing #OpenBook Blog Hop

May 6, 2019

Have you ever made yourself cry (over what you did to a character) while writing a book?

I consider it a compliment to a writer if they can make me cry. Sure, i might allow a few tears to leak from my eyes when I’m reading a particularly sad scene, but crying is different. It takes a lot to make that happen. I have to be heavily invested in the characters.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Maybe that’s why I can make myself cry when I’m writing. I know and even love my characters. When I write something that hurts them, I feel their pain, even though I know what’s coming. After all, I’m the one creating their pain!

Most often, it’s only a few tears. Once in a while, I find myself reaching for the nearby box of tissues. My newest book, The Contessa’s Brooch, fell into the few tears category. (To be released May 15th.)

But the first draft of the first book I wrote had me in full-out tears. (That book will never be released. It wasn’t bad, but it was too derivative of other people’s stories.) Anyway, by the end of the book, I’d killed off both of my main characters. I cried as I wrote  the last chapter and cried more when I wrote the obit that was the epilogue.

I still think it was a great ending. I also think readers would have hated me for it. I changed the ending to a happily-ever-after one in the second draft of the book. One that didn’t make me cry. One that readers would accept. But I still prefer the first ending. I read bits and pieces of it as I wrote this post, and it still has the power to move me to tears.

Now that I’m done sniffling, I’m headed over to see what the other authors have to say.

May 6, 2019

Have you ever made yourself cry (over what you did to a character) while writing a book?

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