I want to apologize for my characters. They’re really not usually snarky. I don’t know why they have to play bad when I let them out to guest-post for me. Max and Scott are really pretty benign most of the time. Lexi…she’s always snarky.

I helped a friend write a letter yesterday. Friend wrote the first draft and I went in and snipped, tightened, and made objective. The reason? Friend was too close to the subject to convey the intended meaning without sounding bitter.

What do the two thoughts above have in common? They’re both based on being written in a certain frame of mind. Not neccessarily the best one to write in.

I don’t know if this is true for all authors, but I suspect it is at least to a point. I have to be in the right frame of mind to write my best work. And for me it involves a sort of emotional dive-in. The music sets my mood and I climb inside my character’s brains and feel what they’re feeling, in order to know how they’ll react to a situation.

When I can’t do this, my stories fall flat. I can look at pieces I’ve written when I tried to force frame of mind and they don’t work. They’re not technically any worse than any of the other pieces, but that feeling is missing. And my readers/critique partners notice it even if they give it a different name.

I’m getting better at figuring how to coerce myself into that frame of mind. It didn’t used to be possible, but I’m learning. Once again – music is a big part of it. And forcing the negativity away. And the big one for me – spending time thinking about what that character is doing when they’re not in my story. I love this last one a lot because it gives me scenes I don’t write but I can use as backstory. It helps me crawl into their brains.

Do you have to be in the right frame of mind to write/write well? And if so, how do you do it? Or are you someone who can pound out a page here and there just because you have free time?