Some writers (and some people) can separate their creative process from their emotions. 

I am not one of them.

And since I can’t separate, I integrate it into my process. 

If an emotion comes up, I’ve never been able to ignore it to focus only on whatever is in front of me. Instead, I sit with the feeling for a while until I understand it better. Then once I’ve learned from it, I look for an opportunity to utilize it in whatever task I have at hand. 

Sometimes, in writing a story, I use the feeling by sharing with one of my characters. What I’m feeling, the character also feels. The circumstances between me and the character may be different, but since the feeling comes from something real to me, it also feels real in the fictional scene. For example, I’ve talked about the way I managed some deeply understandable fear around the agent search before querying OF GIANTS AND ICE, so I shared that fear with Rory, who needed to manage her fear of heights. 

Whenever something in the news troubles me (pretty often these days), I use this feeling as fuel in a different way. For example, the remains of 215 indigenous children were found on the grounds of the last residential school in Canada which operated up until 1996. Though I am not as directly impacted as someone with indigenous heritage or even someone Canadian, but like many, I still have fresh grief, which is an emotional entry point to a much larger issue—specifically, violence against indigenous people on this continent. 

Some people have been reposting about this discovery. Some have been digging into research about other North American residential schools, like the United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA. Since I’m still making my way through Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, I found some questions I’ve been contemplating: “…can Americans, as a nation of immigrants, learn to live here as if we were staying? With both feet on the shore? What happens when we truly become native to a place, when we finally make a home? Where are the stories that lead the way?”

And my own follow-up questions: “how do we integrate with the stories that have lead us here, including the shared and painful history that we’ve inherited? How can they lead us to the world we’re trying to build?” {You can see the complete quote below.}

All of these questions, born from curiosity and compassion, are emotional entry points. When I follow it, I have agency on how far and deep the journey goes.

Emotion is always an invitation, like a doorway leading you to someplace else.

Walking through that door is a choice.

Some people spend their life, closing that door again and again, as many times as it takes to continue on exactly as they were before. 

But I have enough experience to know: opening that door and walking towards the question always leads to a richer, more powerful story—whether it’s the one I am writing or the one I’m living.