Writing is a Mirror

One major thing I've learned from a year of writing every day: writing is a mirror.

What I mean by this, is your writing reveals a lot about you. Not to your readers, necessarily, though obviously you can open yourself up to your readers through your writing. Rather, writing reveals a lot about yourself, to yourself.

Through fiction writing I realized just how much of an external processor I am. People who know me will laugh about that, I talk a lot. When writing fiction, I put all my characters real thoughts in their dialogue and didn't have very much inner monologue.

My writing group harped on me for that. "Your protag never thinks about anything!"

"Of course he does," I would say. "Look, right here where he's talking to so and so, he's thinking about everything!"

"He's not thinking, he's talking."

Oh...

:)

Similarly, I realized that I'm deeply intrigued by what-ifs and second chances. I think about story ideas all the time (I'm always on the lookout for my next book), and I write down the ones that really grab me. One day I realized every idea in my notebook had an element of time manipulation, or fate giving someone a re-do, something like that.

I thought about it and I realized: I'm pretty happy with my life, by I tend to agonize over big decisions and often really wish I could split myself into multiple people, try multiple things at the same time, and then decide later which one was best. That's one of my major fantasies (and an epic story idea, lol).

These are just two examples. Pretty fascinating what you learn when you try new things, huh?