fear of how my writing alters the perception of me
I read a 500 words of wisdom post today about writing that really struck home for me. So much of my work deals with darker themes. Most of my characters are in various stages of healing, usually emotionally, and I'm brutal to them, almost without exception. They come into my world broken, limping, battered, and then I try and put them back togther. Not all of them fit, they might lose pieces here and there. Sometimes, they fragment under the pressure and nothing will ever make them whole again. Many of them can accept that. Some of them can't.
I scare myself frequently and consistently with what I do to my characters, the things that I put them through. The things that happen to them are things I could never concieve of doing to another human being, epescially in the real world. I worry, sometimes, though about what my writing would make other people think of me, what they perceive these works say about me, my personality, my mind.
I can be a very gentle person. I would honestly consider myself one. At the same time, I am also one of those people who has no problems watching some pretty violent movies or reading some fairly graphic books. I learned to stand up for myself pretty early on. Not doing so just meant getting steamrolled into things I didn't want to do.
Still, I wonder, what would people that think they know me say if they read some of the things that I've written. I may not be at the bottom of it, but I most certainly am at the very least poking around in the abyss.
I scare myself frequently and consistently with what I do to my characters, the things that I put them through. The things that happen to them are things I could never concieve of doing to another human being, epescially in the real world. I worry, sometimes, though about what my writing would make other people think of me, what they perceive these works say about me, my personality, my mind.
I can be a very gentle person. I would honestly consider myself one. At the same time, I am also one of those people who has no problems watching some pretty violent movies or reading some fairly graphic books. I learned to stand up for myself pretty early on. Not doing so just meant getting steamrolled into things I didn't want to do.
Still, I wonder, what would people that think they know me say if they read some of the things that I've written. I may not be at the bottom of it, but I most certainly am at the very least poking around in the abyss.