I’ve been writing for a long while now.
I wrote silly runaway adventure stories when I was six or seven, and started writing “poetry” around that age, too, and kept it up all through school, and on until I was in my early twenties.
Four years ago I started my first novel, and now three have been published.
But recently, I began writing screenplays, and I’ve just produced a short thriller based on one of them.
And as I sit at my computer, endeavoring to edit the thing, I’m still in shock–the same shock I experienced at the auditions, the rehearsals, during shooting, and the first time I looked at the footage.
It’s the shock of seeing characters do the things, hearing them say the things I wrote. Experiencing my words brought to life by actual people.
I’ve always had a visceral response to my own writing, from fear-induced heart palpitations to being driven to the edge by the need provoked by the lustier passages of my stories, but those reactions pale by comparison to my cringing, flinching response to what I’m looking at on my screen. And the film is TAME compared to my novels.
So, I’m curious, have any of you found yourself startled, shocked by your own reaction to what you’ve created.
I’ve actually been surprised more at other people’s reactions. Someone wrote me today to tell me what he thought the funniest line in one of my stories was. It had never before struck me as the “funniest” at all, but seeing it through his eyes, I could actually see that, however subconsciously, I had actually done a good job with the rhythm of the dialogue he had quoted.
Perhaps the unifying theme in both of these cases is that we’re seeing our work through the mediation of others. Another pair of eyes, another interpretation, another view - sometimes these help give us a fresh perspective of our own.