Sighing, Willow bangs her head against the wall...

Casey isn't speaking to me... Of course Casey would be the heroine from my current WIP, Instinct, not some random friend I've offended in some way. I'm pretty sure I haven't offended anyone in real life lately...

As you will remember from my last post, it was my last one right?... anywho... I had begun outlining a fun story about a pop/rock singer named Lisa. Not that I want to spend all of my free time working on yet another fun story that I'd like to write, I simply had no choice. I'm sure I'm not the only writer who's been hi-jacked mid-story, well I hope I'm not the only one, that would be weird and kind of lonely...

Well, Lisa has a very strong personality and wasn't about to let me ignore her. I would begin visualizing a scene from Instinct and she'd just walk right in and plop herself down on the couch, turning on the TV and saying something like, "Oh don't mind me, I just have a few things to settle with her," while pointing skyward, towards me. So, yeah... my cast of characters in Instinct got a bit fed up with this so I decided to take a few days and write up a synopsis of Lisa's tale to add to the TBW (To Be Written) pile.

So here I am, quiet house, husband at work, toddler napping... and what am I doing? Blogging. Oh, I tried to work on Instinct- I really did-, but as I mentioned before, Casey's mad at me. As she's the main character and everything is from her POV, this puts me in an awkward position. I understand that she's upset that I took a few days to write up some stuff for Lisa, I really do. Why can't she see that I did this for her. Now Lisa is happily sitting in her own file knowing full well that her story is spinning around in my subconscious, brewing up all sorts of misadventures for her to have. Now I'm free to work on Instinct without any more interruptions from a certain pop/rock princess.

I guess I didn't make things any better between Casey and myself when I pointed out that she is acting just like Heather towards the end of the book. Yeah, that didn't go over well... how could I forget the temper she has? I really should've remembered that, after all she can channel the instincts of Ares to help fuel her anger. I was quickly reminded of this fact once I uttered the stupid words, "You are so being Heather right now..." with a roll of my eyes. The way her eyes flashed bright red as her hands balled into tight fists at her sides before she turned and stormed out of the room... yeah big ol' reminder there. I'm just lucky that the Casey from the end of the book was the one I was talking to, at least she has some semblance of control over her gift. I shudder to think about what could've happened if I had encountered a Casey from an earlier chapter. But seriously, where were the gray eyes of Minerva with all of her wisdom when I needed them, huh?

But anyway... Last night I was able to write the beginning of a chapter that was otherwise done. Yeah, I'm horrible about skipping the beginnings of chapters. I know what I want to happen, just not the best way to start things off to hook the reader. So I use my "blue text" technique and write down a quick summary of what I need to include in the beginning and make it blue and italicized so I can tell what isn't done just by glancing at the page. So far this has worked really well for me.

I'm not really happy with what I wrote though. I think Casey was silently fuming while we were working things out and not cooperating very well. Something with the voice of the scene just sounds too... harsh? compared to everything else I've written. I hope that I'm not losing Casey's voice because of all of these other characters that are swimming around in my head. That would suck because I love Casey and her story. I'm just going to hope that I'm able to smooth out that section of the story in the second draft.

So what am I doing right now to try and locate Casey's voice amongst the ever-expanding crowd of characters in my head? I've tried listening to Edwin McCain singing I'll Be on my iTunes and looking at pictures of the celebrity cast of Instinct that my friend M and I compiled a while back. I'm really hoping that this helps pull me back into Casey's world. I'll Be is sort of the love theme for Casey and one of the men vying for her heart. If this doesn't work I'll have to loop the book's playlist all day while re-reading the entire manuscript, all 236 single-spaced pages of it. Not that I don't enjoy reading the book, I really do, I just wish I could be writing it today.

Maybe the secondary love theme, Why Don't You Kiss Her? by Jesse McCartney will help too... the scene it goes with is one of my favorites so far. Maybe Mina's themes, Do You Believe in Magic? or I'm Walking on Sunshine would do the trick... Man, I need another mad Casey scene to write... all I can hear is her angry voice right now.

Anyone else have characters revolt on them before? Any way to make them cooperate without threatening them? I'd try the whole, "Behave or I'll delete you," but she'd just laugh at me, knowing I couldn't do it. I'm actually tempted to say, "Fine. I'm sure Lisa would be happy to have her story worked on today..." but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't help my case any either. What do you think?

Well, I'm off to have an argument with the voices in my head... man that doesn't sound good...

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

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