“Emotion can come before writing, and after writing, but it must not be present during writing.” Madeleine L’Engle in her book Walking on Water
“If the writer feels it when writing, the reader feels it when reading” - Common Knowledge
As in any pursuit, an incredible variety of emotions may be experienced while in the process of creating a work of fiction. In this little essay-thing, I'll be focusing on my two biggest ones: too strong of an emotional connection with the story itself, and too strong of an emotional connection with the characters. I will try to be as clear as possible about where I see these emotions as streaming from, and in what ways these emotions can get in the way of the process itself.
It's probably best to begin with the most damning emotion of all: few things are as murderous to the creative process as that intoxicating epiphany that one is in the midst of creating something beautiful. This thought is often accompanied by a thrill (which is itself often accompanied by the sense that this thrill is the only requisite to continue creating that "Grand Work" which one has begun), and an intense self-scrutiny which seeks to discover the place from which this beautiful creation has, thus far, been streaming, in order to prolong the inspiration and avoid a loss of control of the process.
Writing solely from the intoxication of an adrenalin-addled imagination however, is a sure way to burnout. As soon as the thrill begins to fade, and fatigue sets in, the infatuation with the text vanishes without a trace, and the writer is left wondering what it was that he or she got so worked up about in the first place. But most troublesome of all is this: having experienced that thrill, it's tempting to think that when one does not feel that way, one is doing something entirely wrong.
Seeking to discover the sources of one's inspiration, to lay them out in the simplest way possible to prevent them from vanishing betrays a lack of confidence in one's ability to truly remain inspired. The trouble is that inspiration is a far more holistic concept than we would like to admit to ourselves, and it seems likely that few have the necessary insight to know exactly why it is that they are writing, until after they have written.
It's understandable to wish to create something beautiful. At the same time, it's likely that if we ever do create something beautiful, we'll be unable to see for ourselves that it is beautiful. Though this thought can be terrifying, and though we can feel tempted to try to figure it all out in spite of our lack of insight, it's far worse to cut off the creative process simply because one wishes to step back and figure out why one has suddenly gotten the sense that one has created something beautiful.
Even if our intuition is correct, and we have finally written the most beautiful page or paragraph or sentence we have ever written, we will likely never discover what it was that made it so beautiful, and so we will be unable to move onward. Though every bit of writing can be improved upon, we cannot rewrite it, for fear that we will end up writing out, and losing forever that fiction's as-yet-undiscovered essence. And, depending on our degree of neuroticism, we cannot write further pages or paragraphs or sentences, for fear that they won't give us that sense of having created a beautiful thing.
It seems more practical to tell one's self that even if creating beautiful things is one's stated goal, the creation of beautiful things is largely out of one's conscious control, dependent on a holistic and intuitive understanding of language, emotions, storytelling etc, and that the thrilling realization that one is attaining one's goals is both irrelevant, and ironically, counterproductive.
The second problematic emotion is too-keen of an empathetic connection with one's characters. Obviously, since we are writing them, if they are to be well-rounded, we will have to utilize many different aspects of our own personalities, and in doing so we will understand where they are coming from. But the goal of writing fiction (that one wishes to share with others, of course) is not to have an inner experience, but to give one. Since the individual reader's response to the text will vary dramatically between readers, and different parts will stand out to different readers, it seems rather narrow-minded to think that more readers will feel that sense of connection if we feel it first.
Personally, I find absolute identification with my own characters to be both emotionally draining and self-indulgent. As before, once one has written something that one feels encapsulates an aspect of one's soul, it's hard to go back and rewrite it, for fear of destroying the essence of the writer's own sensation of connection.
I see the goal of fiction as illusion. The more the writer writes from a place of pure emotionality, the less his or her own emotions and desires are sublimated into something more complex, and the more his or her hand shows through, and the more the illusion is broken. Storytelling is not about self-expression, but about telling a good story.
However, I like to hope that a good story told well will inescapably capture the uniqueness of the writer's own personality and voice. In a way, self-expression is inescapable. We need not worry about fully embedding ourselves in the personalities of our creations.
James Daniels
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