For me, writing has always been writing about what I liked, what I wanted to read and what I was comfortable with. But that doesn't make for a good-or even great-story. I was always afraid to write things that hurt. I don't want my characters to hurt, to fill pain, to cry. Yes, my characters face challenges, but those challenges, I've come to understand, only touch the surface of my characters' feelings. I have to write what I don't want to. I have to make my characters face their fears, my fears. So I have to write what causes them, me, pain. I have to write what will make my characters cry, mad, selfish and behave in ways I don't want to see them behave. It hurts, but it makes my characters all that more real. And that's what it's all about. Writing a character so believable, your reader can relate to them in many ways; the reader can see themselves in the situations you write about, even if those situations are set in a universe completely foreign to them.
And so, I write those things that will make me cry because I don't want my character to behave like that. I don't want her to do something so selfish. I don't want him to die. It hurts. I hurt. And after the tears and the anger, I read over my story and I realize the truth. My story, my characters are better for it. So write the hard parts, you'll be a better writer because of it.
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