Why writing is so important to me. Part 2.

Do you know that feeling you get when you watch a big action sequence in a movie, unaware that your mouth is gaping open? The feeling when two people who've been denying their feelings for each other for years finally share their first kiss? The feeling you have when someone you've seen live the most important years of their life slips away from life? What about the feeling you get when something so awful to imagine happens before your eyes, or the feeling you get when above all else, the good things in existence triumph over the bad?

These are stories. Whether in real life, in a movie, or in a book, they are stories.

Forget the movies, i don't have to worry about special effects, or props, or the actors, or having to get up at six in the morning to film the perfect sunrise.

I am a writer - a creative writer to be precise. And that means i get to live through these sorts of things everyday. I can create whatever sort of scenario i want, and all i have to do is write it down, and then there it is, ready for someone else to read it, and enter my world.

In many ways, a writer is a perfectionist's job, for you get to create every little thing, in as much or as little detail as you want.

I find it hard to understand the real world, so i create my own worlds. Then i design my characters - their role in the story first, then their personality. Next comes their appearance and their names. Then i create relationships between characters, in ways that give the story a jolt, and i give each character a family and a history. As i've said before, you have to get the characters right.

Most of my current stories revolve around wars. Whether it's against the shadows - the merciless enemy, or the followers of the dark religion - the people you can pass on the street every day.

You make the story. You design the Kings and the leaders. You give them their motivations. You drop in a fun character every now and again to lighten the mood or intensify it.

You design the weapons and the tactics. You build the fortresses and the cities and outposts from the ground up. You create the landscape. You carve rivers and erect mountains. You grow a forest here and there, and you pick the perfect spot for a battle to take place.

Then the people who the reader has connected with in the past pages, suddenly have their lives in peril.

The characters react. If a loved one dies the act the same way you would. They get mad. They find strength and release everything they have on their enemies. Some people cower in fear. Others freeze. Others triumph.

All the character design you've done, lets you simply watch your characters react they way they would. You don't need to think, the story writes itself.


The best thing i find about writing is the emotions it creates. After all the designing and thinking, I've made myself laugh, and also moved myself to tears, and my reader experiences the same.

That is one of the joys of my life.

When i feel an emotional connection to my characters, and it hurts when one of them dies, i know i've succeeded. When my friend reading my story next to me has to stifle his laughter because we're in the library, i know my story works. When i can't help but smile when my two beloved characters finally find their way into each other's arms, i know that writing is my destiny.

I feel i was born to create. I feel that exciting and moving other people is what i was born to do.

I know that i will write for as long as my mind and body will let me, because without it, i don't know what i would do.