Oh yeah... one more thing...

While writing and proofreading my last post I had something else happen to me that I'd like to share. When I'm writing, I tend to have iTunes running in the background, playing all of my songs on shuffle so that some random song can pop up and inspire me.

Well, as some people know, I have a mental playlist of songs that go with this story, it's own soundtrack if you will. One song in particular that is never mentioned in any of the chapters in any way, shape, or form has always had a major impact on me when I hear it. I first heard it in the background of my brain when I was typing during the "week of emotional scenes" over our Thanksgiving holiday. I was writing a lot of mushy relationship scenes between Casey and one of my male main characters and this song started playing in my head.

Now, this isn't a current song at all, I think that it was at it's most popular back in the '90s during the time when shows like Dawson's Creek were "the" show to watch. (I know this because this song debuted on a season finale of the show.)

This song has come to be the song that represents the true love between these characters. Being that it represents such a strong emotion and me being such an emotional person, yes I cry when I hear it. But it's worse than that! Whenever I hear it now, I have to completely stop working until the song is over, no matter what I'm doing at the time. I sit there and scenes from the story flash through my head while I hold back the tears. Now, the easy solution would be to skip past the song and continue working... Now what in my life is ever easy? I can't even bring myself to skip this song. It's like my brain freezes up and I get sucked into the emotions of my characters until the song is over.

Now I have over 4 playlists of various songs for this book but no other songs on any of them have this affect on me. Now, granted this song is an emotional song in and of itself, but this is crazy. I used to listen to this song randomly before, but it never had this affect on me.

So, I've come to a conclusion... I'm addicted to my own book. Over the months that I've spent getting this far, I've developed a strong emotional connection with my characters. So strong is this emotion, that I lose sleep after writing a scene that would cause them to lose sleep. I cry with them when they're sad. I celebrate with them when they are happy. Hell, I even get that butterfly-in-your-stomach feeling right along with them as they fall in love. So if you think that the emotions you feel on a daily basis are intense... imagine feeling at least three other people's emotions along with yours almost all of the time! You wanna talk intense!

So everyone cross your fingers that I can somehow get these emotions onto the page. One of my reviewers seems to have the same reactions to scenes that I do so far, so I just have to hope that I can keep it up!

Now to play that song again so I can go spend some more time in my fantasy world...

Until I blog again (and it shouldn't be again tonight...)
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Currently listening to: I'll Be By Edwin McCain