Emotional...

His wedding ring and tag I wear around my neck

I’ve been very absent from blogging lately. Not just blogging, but writing in general. I’ve read WF and started revisions, but halfheartedly. My husband deployed, and a piece of me left on Monday. It’s been hard for me to concentrate. I check my phone continuously making sure I haven’t missed his call. Skype, facebook, and messenger remain open on my desktop in case he finds a hotspot and is able to connect. My kids are curious why Daddy hasn’t come home from work. I have to repeatedly tell them that Daddy had to go to work for a long time and won’t be home for a while. But the hardest is bedtime, when I crawl into our king size bed alone. It might as well be as vast as the ocean that separates us. I play our song, Lucky, about a hundred times a day and wonder if he is doing the same. This house is lonely without him.

I go on though, working and cleaning to keep my mind busy. The house remains spotless. My friends and family send notes and texts of encouragement, offering help if it’s ever needed.

I know this is sad and depressing, and you are probably wondering what it has to do with writing. It has everything to do with writing. Writers are fueled by their emotions. We can’t help that what we are feeling pours onto the page, and when we need to concentrate on a certain piece where the emotions are opposite to what it is we are feeling, it can be frustrating.

This morning I tried to rewrite the beginning of WF. I wrote it up and sent it to my Alpha-Beta, aka Mom. Nothing is final until she approves it. In short, she didn’t like it. She wrote back to me, “It just sounds so forced. You need to let it flow.”

She was right. I had felt the same about it as I was writing it, but that is just how my writing is now. I feel it has to be forced out.

I know the sadness will lessen in a week or so and my writing will flow again, but until then I’m stuck trying to learn how to revise around my mixed up emotions.

How do your emotions affect your writing?

A.McBay