The Mystery Starts Here

I wandered through Barnes and Noble the other day, perusing the bargain books, always a dangerous thing to do, when I came upon, “Creating Character Emotions, Writing compelling, fresh approaches that express your characters’ true feelings,” by Ann Hood. Well, gee, a writing book and on sale? I had to buy it, of course.

At home, I sat down and started reading. There are things I liked about the book, some not so much. The beginning of the book explores Hood’s background and explains some of the reasons she wrote the book. The bulk of the text is taken up by 36 chapters, each highlighting an emotion: Anger, Fear, Irritation, Longing. With each chapter, the author gives both good and bad examples, and at the end of the chapter, exercises to help write better emotions.

I liked the idea of individual chapters. That way when I’m writing and get stuck, I can simply pick up the book and turn to the emotion I need help with to get some ideas. I really don’t think the bad examples were necessary. For instance in the chapter on Excitement: “Stephanie felt the proverbial butterflies in her stomach as the train huffed to a stop.” Yup, pretty bad. I think just showing examples of good use of emotions would have been enough. So far I haven’t done any of the writing exercises – I’m too busy working on my own writing.

So, like most writing books I have on my shelf, “Creating Character Emotions” is a good tool. I’ve read it thorugh and can now refer to it whenever I need help putting emotions into my writing. The book was written in 1998, so if you are interested in the subject, you might want to try and find a more up-to-date volumn.

I have been writing for over 25 years and have to say, I don’t get writer’s block. I’m lucky because I started my writing career working for newspapers and there are no writer’s blocks in newsrooms. Newspapers have deadlines. If you’re given an assignment and told to write four or six or 12 inches by 6:00 PM, you do it. Believe me if you can’t make deadlines, there are a lot of bright young writers lined up to take your job.

I don’t have deadlines anymore, well other than the ones that are self-imposed but I still don’t get blocked. Oh, I may run out of steam on one project or get bored with it, but then I just shift to another piece and work on that for a while. Because I freelanced for so long, I always have multiple projects going. Right now I’m working on and alternating between: a memoir, an article for an anthology and three novels. That’s not much I know, but I’m semi-retired, I’ve been writing for a long time and I’m getting lazy.

I guess I don’t understand writer’s block. I mean, do plumbers get blocked? Do teachers get blocked? Have you ever heard an accountant say, "I couldn’t go to work today. I’m blocked. I simply cannot add another number." I’m afraid that poor accountant would starve to death pretty fast. So like the plumber or teacher or accountant, you show up at the page every day and just write. Don’t worry about writer’s block, it doesn’t exsist.

Here’s a quote from comedienne and author Steve Martin about writer’s block that I love: "Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcolol."