I Disappear When I Write

I heard somewhere that Jules Verne was so engrossed in his writing that when he was working on a chapter taking place in Arctic, he got sick with flu.

It happens to all of us more often than not, when we write, we become so much part of the story, we transport there and the world disappears. We are right there, in the middle of the scene, seeing what characters are seeing, feeling what they are feling. We fall in love and our hearts race. We get scared and our hands go ice cold.

I love this experience. I feel that in the moments like these I am writing what truly matters to my heart, because I get lost in it without any limitations from the inner critic. Later I reread it and think: ‘WOW, I wrote that? I don’t even remember writing it!’

I also love this experience because I love to read and writing in a moment like this is like reading an unwritten book that is unfolding right before me. It’s amazing that we can write things that we had no idea we had inside us!

Recently I was writing an intense love scene and when I got back into the real world an hour later, I had written 2K words, my heart was racing like crazy and I was completely exhausted. Our mind is a powerful thing that can take us anywhere we want and, if we are lucky, our readers will follow us there.

Tell me about your ‘getting lost in a moment’ experience!

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