Seven Hours Straight

I edited my second book the other night for seven hours straight. In the end, I was nauseous and at that point only sleep would help. 

No one said writing books would be easy. 

I guess this is part of it. The writer takes on the suffering, hardships, and victories of their characters. It’s emotionally and physically exhausting, but for a writer, it’s an absolute necessity to live. Like breathing. 

The irony here: for many of us, writing can be therapeutic, but as we shed our skin of our own experiences we take on the new ones of our characters, all imagined by us from the beginning. 

It’s like being cleansed but using the exact thing we want to be cleansed of to cleanse ourselves. 

I felt nauseous the other night. I wrote about death, dark corners that exist in evil minds, sorrow and yet I never felt more proud and motivated after those seven hours. I feel my craft pumping through my veins and getting stronger every minute, every hour that I spend with it.

Like any art, like any craft, it stretches at your heart. It can drive you insane.

But who wants to live any other way?  

So there I lay ready to sleep, queasy, with a smile on my face.
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-Sterp