I have a confession to make. I live two different lives, sometimes three. Or more. And no, I’m not a secret agent.
There’s my real life where I work at my day job and interact with my husband, friends and family, go grocery shopping, to the post office and all sorts of mundane activities.
Then there’s my other life — the one I live inside my head. It’s a fully developed world in there, sort of a parallel universe. The scenery changes on a regular basis and the characters change too. But in many ways, I feel like I know those characters better than I know the people in my real life. Probably because I invented them.
There’s always a swirl of activity going on in the world inside my head, different stories, different scenes, bits of dialogue. When it finally explodes all over my word-processing program, it’s often different than the way it appeared in my mind, sometimes better, sometimes not, sometimes just different.
Once my fingers get into the act, they take over and the actors take center stage. I become merely a voyeur watching the action unfold and taking dictation. I try not to interfere and I allow the characters to do what ever it is they want to do. I find they usually know better than me, even when they are making hideous choices that will impact their lives and those around them.
I have to presume that this second life I live inside my head is an occupational hazard, common among authors like me. It’s just not something we discuss in public very often.
Readers have a second life too, right? The one where they get lost inside a good story. So let's get our fantasy worlds together. Check out the fruits of my other life -- In Love and War, Dream Boat, and my newest novel, Degrees of Separation.
Happy musings,
Natalie