Pain

 Happy Friday everyone! Today I am going to talk about pain in my WIP (work in progress).

  

  My main character, Mynnah, experiences a lot of pain both physically and mentally throughout her life time. Much of the fiscal pain takes place before the book starts so that causes much of the mental pain that she struggles with throughout the book.

  Without going into to much detail, Mynnah was abused before the we meet her in chapter one. I did a lot of research into the kind of abuse I decided she would suffer (Wow, looking back at what I just wrote sounds kind of cold, doesn't it? Ah, the life of a writer.) I tried my best to research, imagine, and add some of my own experiences with pain to the book to make Mynnah's struggles seem more real.

  I decided to give my MC some pain for several reasons. One, because everyone experiences some kind of physical and emotional pain at some point or another so that makes her more relatable to the reader. And two, because I experienced some very harsh physical and emotional pain myself and thought I was at least party equipped to wright about such a tender topic.

  You see, early in 2013 I was diagnosed with ALL or Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. For those of you who don't know, that is a form of blood cancer. My doctors and nurses warned me early on, there was gonna be a lot of pain. At the time I had never broken a bone or even dislocated an arm. Falling off my bike when I was 8 into a prickle bush is about the most physical pain I could every recall before that year.

  I learned quickly what real pain could feel like. Chemotherapy, the "medicine" they gave me to kill of the cancer cells, is actually more like poison. It can't distinguish bad cells from good cells, and as a result I lost my hair, all the good bacteria in my gut, a lot of weight, and my immune system. To make a long story short, I felt like crap for 7 months and many days I was so weak I couldn't even get out of bed.

  What Mynnah experiences in the book isn't the same as what I went through, but the constant, sometimes unexplained emotional and physical pain is something we share very closely. I tried to make her reaction to what had happened to her match my own. I hope I did a good job.

  But it is important to remember, whether you have experienced the pain you are writing about or not, that everyone reacts differently. Some people close up, some people open up, some get angry at themselves and the world, and others go mad. What your character does it up to you and what you think his/her personality is.

  I hope I didn't scare you away from writing about pain! I think it adds a lot of depth and realness to any story. And, as all writers know, you don't have to experience it to write about it.

  P.S. Editing update! Tuesday at my Grandmother's I got a solid hour in of editing which is a big deal to me. I am almost half way through draft 8!