Sometimes I Made Myself Laugh, Sometimes I Made Myself Cry

I’d never written a book before. I’d never sat alone on a sofa with a laptop, sobbing my heart out. I’d never had a labradoodle look at me with his head tilted to one side because I was apparently laughing at nothing. I discovered what it was like to be a writer by letting myself go to those places.

But how does that happen? How can feelings be so intense when you just pull them out of thin air, form them, wrap them in words and place them on a page? It makes no sense to a logical man.

Hell, I’ve had to walk away from restaurant dinner tables because my mind kept playing a scene I needed to write and wasn’t going to take French onion soup for an answer.

I’ve noodled on this effect and all I can conclude is that the imagined (or perhaps subconsciously remembered) moment is tapping into a joy or pain I had locked away in my brain somewhere. A box that had been unopened for years or perhaps decanted into another box. The written word unlocked it and out poured the contents.

I hope they made my writing better. They certainly made me laugh and cry.

And a labradoodle wonder if he needed to intervene.