I write YA from teen girls' perspectives, and as such there are usually some tears, or the threat of tears, involved in my stories. My characters are experts at swallowing their tears, blinking them back, or plain old commanding them to stop.
Today when I was pulled over for speeding on the way home from picking up carpool, I decided to employ my writing tricks as my eyes began to well up with the dreaded T-bombs (and they always do when those flashing reds and blues are for me).
Swallow. Blink. Blink. Blink. Swallow again.
Stop it, stupid tears! Get lost!
I even looked up at my eyebrows while blinking (I've never written about doing that). Nothing, and I repeat NOTHING, could stop my tears from trickling down my face.
Which forces me to admit: I am not able to control my tears in front of four elementary kids and one super nice cop. So how in the crap are my teen protagonists able to control theirs? They must be infinitely more talented at keeping their emotions under wraps. I should take lessons from them. Or maybe I should rewrite my scenes to be a bit more realistic, because let's face it, it's not so easy to stop the rain when it starts to sprinkle.
Getting pulled over by a cop was the catalyst for my tears, but the fifteen minute rainstorm that followed was due to other stressful things going on in my life right now. A blog post idea was born once the sun came out again (figuratively speaking only because today is really cloudy). I can already laugh at myself too. At least until I have to pay my ticket, anyway.
Today when I was pulled over for speeding on the way home from picking up carpool, I decided to employ my writing tricks as my eyes began to well up with the dreaded T-bombs (and they always do when those flashing reds and blues are for me).
Swallow. Blink. Blink. Blink. Swallow again.
Stop it, stupid tears! Get lost!
I even looked up at my eyebrows while blinking (I've never written about doing that). Nothing, and I repeat NOTHING, could stop my tears from trickling down my face.
Which forces me to admit: I am not able to control my tears in front of four elementary kids and one super nice cop. So how in the crap are my teen protagonists able to control theirs? They must be infinitely more talented at keeping their emotions under wraps. I should take lessons from them. Or maybe I should rewrite my scenes to be a bit more realistic, because let's face it, it's not so easy to stop the rain when it starts to sprinkle.
Getting pulled over by a cop was the catalyst for my tears, but the fifteen minute rainstorm that followed was due to other stressful things going on in my life right now. A blog post idea was born once the sun came out again (figuratively speaking only because today is really cloudy). I can already laugh at myself too. At least until I have to pay my ticket, anyway.
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