An Author's Discovery

Build a world. Insert characters. Add drama. Find resolution.

That's my job as an author. Sure, there are some other, more complex points, like eliciting an emotional response from readers and helping them to see our world in a different way.

But basically, it's just―Build a world. Insert characters. Add drama. Find resolution. All while using a lot of words.

One of the most interesting things I've noticed while repeating this process so many times is how often little ticks from authors' real lives drift into their books.

I love mountains and hiking, so naturally a good portion of my books take place in and around the mountains.

I've long known that my shoddy lungs also drift into my books. When breathing can be hard, it tends to translate into a conscious action more often.

Recently, I've been having a lot of trouble with light. Yeah, like all light, not just sunlight. Fluorescent lights now give me a horrible reaction. On my face. FML.

In some ways, my longstanding, Lupus-fueled battle with the sun has already bled into my books. In the Girl of Glass and Heart of Smoke series, the sun can be deadly with prolonged exposure.

But now that I have to apply sunscreen inside and STILL freakin' react to florescent lights and may have to start wearing a sun hat to go into the grocery store, I can't help but wonder how my new loathing of all light will leak into my books.

Perhaps my new writing process will be―Build a world. Remove all light. Insert characters. Add drama. Find resolution.

Now that I've typed that, I've literally just realized I've already written that book, and it's on my agent's desk.

Great. Great.

Who needs therapy when you can be an author and figure out your own idiosyncrasies by looking at your backlist.