Emotion and the Narrative – Feelings from Writing

 Maybe it’s just me. It could be. A lot of things are. But does anyone else who writes out there sometimes find their feelings about a certain scene or story they’ve written can be unduly influenced by how they were feeling when they wrote it?

Take Grim. Please. Yes, I know that sounds odd, to speak thus of one of the characters of my own work. But the trouble is – I associate him with trouble. I think I must have spent more time on that section of The Disposable, the scenes with Grim at his Fortress, than any other part of the book. Certainly, with only the possible exception of the opening of the second book of my trilogy (we’ll get to that some later day!), it’s the most rewritten and the most problematic scene I’ve ever written. Grim the Dark General has been through so many incarnations, so many different ways of responding and being that I honestly struggle to remember which one I ended up with. I’m still not even entirely sure to this day that it’s right. In my head, I’m not sure it ever can be.

And so, whenever I read that scene back now, I get that heavy associated feeling of difficulty. I remember the struggle it was to write it, how many times I had to write it and the frustration of it all. That scene and I have been through too much together for me to read it impartially.

On the other hand – there are the joys. The days when the writing just flowed. The days when it was easy, when the characters pretty much wrote themselves. I love re-reading those scenes – I get a big smile on my face. The scene with the AFCs by the waterfall is one of those – I had so much fun that day, it was ridiculous. And then there’s Dullard’s first scene – I came to him having struggled and fought my way through Grim (and not as it turned out for the last time) and it was like he was just there, fully formed and waiting politely in the wings for me to notice him and usher him on stage. He sprang effortlessly to life and took the story on with him and I was so grateful to him for that.

I can’t help these associations. They’ll always be there. But the matter I can never quite resolve with myself is – can anybody else tell?

I always assume somehow that dissatisfaction must leave its mark on a scene. And perhaps it does. But that isn’t always the case. Back in my fanfiction writing days, being a fool, I didn’t like the idea of leaving people hanging on my longer stories and so committed myself to regular updates – two chapters a week initially, reducing to one as life crowded in. And once I’d announced that, there was an obligation. So when I became ill during the writing of one, I nonetheless had to press ahead. And I associated the chapters I wrote over those tough weeks with strife and trouble and didn’t think much of them. But then, years later, I came back and re-read that story, having forgotten by then which specific chapters had been the offending ones and found I couldn’t tell which ones they had been. Certainly the association had tainted my opinion of the quality of the writing.

Do I have a point? I’m not entirely sure, to be honest with you. I just find it interesting the way the memory of feelings can affect judgement of quality. I can’t say I’ve ever read a book and thought – “oooh, the author was having a bad day when they wrote that scene” and yet I still can’t quite escape the paranoia with my own work that people can tell. I don’t know if anyone else, be it writer or reader, can relate to this. I don’t know if people really can tell. Because as I said – maybe it’s just me...