Group member Anne, a former student of mine, is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree at Columbia College Chicago. I worked with her on an Undergraduate Research Scholar Program project about the popularity and tropes of genre fiction, and I even invited her into my class to give a mini-workshop on her findings (I do not invite just anyone to take over my class; in fact, it’s only happened twice in nine years).

Anne talks genre fiction mash-ups to my creative writing students

Anne is a great writer and talented young woman. Here, she talks about tapping into her own emotions to serve her writing process. Enjoy Anne’s post!

This is a guest post from Anne Donald, a member of this summer’s Online Writing Group:

Writing has saved me hours of emotional turmoil, because for me that is a huge emotional release. It’s where nothing matters beyond the story I need to tell. When I’m feeling extreme emotions lately I’ve been reaching out to my manuscripts and journal. These raw emotions are the driving force behind my writing. I’m creating my own world, a world where the feeling of writer’s block is drowned out by the message I want to send. When I started at the fiction writing program at Columbia, I found myself in a massive writer’s block; but then when I would scroll through the Internet and came upon posts that evoked extreme emotions from me, I would turn to Microsoft Word or my journal and just write.

The students get to work with Anne’s writing exercise

Using my emotions and experiences, I am able to get in the zone until the story I need to tell is completed. Another thing that helps me is posing questions to myself, asking myself the what would I do if I were in that situation type of questions. Usually I have a long list of questions I ask myself. Sometimes I even write a letter to my characters. And when I feel passionate about that or am able to completely get into my character’s mind, the writer’s block is cleared up.

I am an avid lover of history, so for me looking up historical facts, reading history textbooks or historical fiction, and finding things no one has written about fuel me and induce me into writing a story that I feel needs to be told or there is a message that I need the world to hear. Lately I have been branching outside historical fiction and dipping my toe in the waters of other genres and I have found that my emotions and experiences allow me to let the story tell me what it wants, no matter the genre.

If I can’t really think of anything to write, I purposely turn to things that I know will evoke an extreme emotional reaction from me; then my mind clears from its writer’s block and I’m able to tell what I need to tell. Also, I love reading and asking questions about the novels. I’m excited because lately I have been branching into unknown territory for me, where I put my characters in situations I wouldn’t normally find myself in. That goes back to the what would I/my characters do in certain situations that are new to me/them? I find my writing process easier when I am doing something that I enjoy as well, but more often than not this distracts me and I need to feel that raw emotion put to paper to clear up any remaining traces of that pesky writer’s block.

Anne’s method of getting into her characters’ heads and using her own emotions and hypothetical responses to situations is a great way to write believable actions and reactions. What else do you do to realize your characters?