Can what you write affect you?

In this, I mean can the process and content of one's writing, what one has created, affect one either positively or negatively, give the writer good feelings and inspire, or trouble the writer?

I suppose it depends upon the individual. I write hardboiled detective stories and noir, which is dark with an air of hopelessness and inevitable disaster about it, but it has no effect at all on me.

Really, Dick? No effect/affect on you? I thought that is what made you grouchy and stodgy? *giggle*

As a writer you need a thick skin, not just to deal with rejection but also the memories and the images that fill our minds; no matter how hard these may be.

Carol,
yes, to me it does. I wonder about the reaction of the reader. Did they like it? Did they learn something? Did it irritate them? Will there be repercussions?
This is especially true with my novel, "They Plotted Revenge Against America." With the promotion planned for May, I expect to receive criticism. I had to deal with that possibility before I sought publication. I knew the risk I was taking but felt it was worth the risk.
The change of pace is the romance novel that was accepted for publication. My feelings about that are entirely different.

Carol! Oh my yes!

When I write my stories I am THERE. I am in my story's world and I am each and every character.

In my romances I feel the love each character has for the other. If a character is hurt, I feel it.

If I am writing something very emotional I feel drained.

I've even developed 'crushes' on my characters.

Very often if I've been writing for hours and have to suddenly stop ... because we've arrived a truck stop to eat or something ... it takes me awhile to 'shake away' where I have been and return to reality.

Last weekend I took my daughter down to my old homeplace and visited
"The Rock" on top of the mountain where my novel Keechie is set. We
were sitting on the rock, soaking up the energy that seems to permeate
the atmosphere.

I turned to my daughter and said, "You know Keechie is buried right down there?"

For a brief moment in time, I really believed it.

So yes, what I write affects me - usually in a positive way.

My work has gotten me fired, sued, jailed, beaten up, shot at, and literally run out of town.

Does that count?

No, Lin, it doesn't count until the people who don't like your writing quit beating around the bush and tell you straight out how they feel about it.

I wrote a story, "Ice Storm," in which a woman leaves a highway in a whiteout with disastrous results. It's due for publication in Romance of My Dreams anthology soon.

Just before Easter, I drove my mom from Florida to Michigan. As we left Kentucky, severe weather set in. By Indiana, we were scanning the sky for tornado funnels as the radio beeped its severe warnings.

This continued through high and gusty winds and torrential rain in Indiana that turned to sleet, then slush and finally a blinding wet snow whiteout at the Indiana, Michigan border. It was 11:00 p.m.

I was afraid to keep driving and afraid to leave the road in the middle of nowhere - ghosts haunting me from the short story I wrote; not wishing to meet her same fate. Mother kept telling me to continue, but she is 90; and the stress was getting to us both. I was damned to continue and damned to leave the road, just like my heroine in "The Ice Storm." Unlike her, I found a truck and stuck like glue.

Fortunately, the weather improved the further north we traveled. It was just a little too close to fiction on that trip.

My next novel to be published in the fall, Ghost Orchid, begins with a fatal crash as a car makes a left from a road in the swamp onto a curving highway. Another passing car on the double lanes is hidden by a truck. The left-turning vehicle has time to turn before the slow truck, but is caught by the passing car.

I turn left out of a similar road quite often. I watch that traffic until there's not a vehicle as far as I can see in either direction. The road spooks me.

I have to say that when I write of the animals that I see, the god-awful-ness of the world does not exist. Perhaps it is that the human ego does not exist. It does not involve hypothetical stuff. Time is now and not into the future to figure out. Every thing in the animal world is life and death and joy. I imagine that those three things explain most any animal's life. I like the joy part. I have seen the dance.

Love,
Betty

Carol I like your reference to "trouble". That's the kind of level I find myself effected to when I write - I try to keep a professional distance, but there are some things that leave me a little itchy I call it, which is probably troubled. At one time I was writing about some stories that take place in the dark - spooky corners and the like. I still don't like taking the garbage out to the dumpster in the back of our building, because i am reminded of a couple of those stories and get the willies.
The other feeling that I get from my writing is a huge feeling of satisfaction when I get something finished. That's probably one of my favourite feelings of all.

I remember staying stressed, irritable, and angry while I was writing the wartime portion of A Myth in Action. The anger was directed at the "mindless machine" that the war seemed to be. From the government leaders to the admirals and generals to the technology that produced the sophisticated weaponry, there seemed to be something that was completely oblivious to the plight of the foot soldiers whose very existence was on the line, like those soldiers were pawns in a monumental chess game. I had a book on my shelves, a book that had belonged, I think, to one of my uncles, and had found its way to my parents' bookcase, and from there to mine when my mom moved in with me. The book was called My Three Years with Eisenhower, and was written by his naval aide, Capt. "Harry" Butcher. It told of major decisions that were made during and just after bridge games, played by Ike and his higher officers and staff. If I had not already developed strong feelings for the rights and needs of all the everyday citizens of Main Street (as opposed to Wall Street), to take the metaphor to our current situations, writing that part of that book would have done it, hands down.

Ann