This week’s topic is:
Have you ever made yourself cry (over what you did to a character) while writing a book?
No, not to a character as such, but I did shed a few tears when I wrote my memoir ‘Waiting in the Wings’ while remembering past times spent with relatives who are no longer alive.
My aunt June was an amazing woman, not intelligent in the classic sense, but gifted with oodles of common sense, a happy nature, and a warm personality that endeared her to everybody she met. I loved to stay at her house during some of the school holidays, and she would make my day exciting in a way that my own mother never seemed to. We’d go to fairgrounds and ride on rollercoasters, make glitter pictures, swim in the garden pool, and there was a large dressing up box in the shed full of clothes and high heeled shoes for my cousins and myself to play with.
It’s awfully sad to wallow in the past, and I try not to do it. However, it’s difficult not to do this when you’re writing a memoir! There are advantages to growing older, but one of the downsides is that you start to lose all the older generation of relatives you grew up with, as one by one they age and wither away. It happens to all of us, and we must each deal with loss as best we can. However, I’m glad I wrote my memoir before I also age and wither away and become too old to remember it all!
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dgkaye said:
I can vouch about the pain in writing memoir. 🙂 xx
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Stevie Turner said:
Somehow therapeutic though, I think?
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dgkaye said:
Definitely!!! 🙂
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aurorawatcherak said:
Reblogged this on aurorawatcherak.
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Stevie Turner said:
Thanks Lela for the re-blog.
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aurorawatcherak said:
Wow, my husband was talking about that yesterday. He has a story that should be told and when I think about writing it, it makes me want to cry because it’s painful. He’s getting to a point where he wants to tell his side of that story (it’s been 25 years and he has always said he wouldn’t). So, I don’t know. I told him to get started on his notes and I’ll look at them in the fall when I put my latest novel to bed.
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Stevie Turner said:
He’ll feel a lot better when he’s written about it and got it out of his system…
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Jodie said:
You wouldn’t be human if reliving some of these memories didn’t affect you, Stevie. And I bet that makes you a better writer!!
XOOX
Jodie
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Keto For Beginners said:
Since I have not yet written a book, no, I haven’t made myself cry over a character but I have made myself cry over a personal essay I have written if I thought it was particularly touching. Unfortunately, the editors I sent them to must not have.
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Stevie Turner said:
Same here. I only send stories twice now. If they’re rejected twice then I don’t send them any more.
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Léa said:
You’ve been peeking over my shoulder… 😉
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Darlene said:
For the first time, I cried as I wrote the last chapter of Amanda in Holland as it is emotional, both sad and happy. I never know how my books will end until I get there and this one made me cry. My critique partners said it was my best ending yet. I hope my readers feel the same way.
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richarddeescifi said:
A great post, I miss my relatives and wish that I had spent more time with them, and could remember all the wisdom that, as a child, I thought unimportant.
In my writing, I feel for my characters, after all, I have given birth to them, given them life and emotions. If ever I have to kill one, no matter how essential for the plot, it causes me grief and heart-searching. I wonder if I could not just injure them, or banish them to safety?
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Stevie Turner said:
I was told by one agent never to kill a character off, as they each have their own journey.
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P.J. MacLayne said:
But sometimes the story calls for it. after all, death is part of our lives.
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Stevie Turner said:
True. The agent told me that readers on the whole don’t like to see a character killed off. I changed the ending of ‘Revenge’ to reflect this, but admit that I did kill a character off in ‘The Donor’.
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robertawrites235681907 said:
Writing memoir with heart wrenching moments would be difficult, Stevie. I remember when I went to the first psychologist that Greg saw when he was four. I cried so much reliving our story, I used nearly a whole box of tissues.
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Stevie Turner said:
Yes it’s difficult, but people reading it probably won’t share the same emotions. It’s therapeutic though!
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