Honest Lyrics, Part One: 2 AM

It's two am and I'm still awake writing a song
If I get it all down on paper,
it's no longer inside me, threatening the life it belongs to...
--Anna Nalik, "Breathe"

Every piece that I write consumes me, especially when it comes to my fiction. When I'm working on Bands or JitO, my body moves with the story, and I lose myself in the emotions that the characters are feeling. When I become one with my characters, even after they've acquired a life of their our, I can write so much more easily what they see, fell, and think.

This makes stepping into someone else's shoes all the more literal. In the depths of my writing, I've become Katie, Kris, and Paul. I've felt their words pounding into my brain and the pain when I can't write their stories down fast enough.

I live for my character's sakes. As Natasha Bedingfield references in "Unwritten," all these things that they tell me, they can tell only me, and I am the only one who can tell their story to the world. I make no claims to control my characters, rather, the reverse is true: they tell me what to write, and I am enslaved to their needs, their stories, their words. I don't write for my own sake, except to the extend that that is the only way they can speak, and if I don't write what they tell me, my mind fills up and blocks out everything else I need to focus on in my life.

I write their stories to save myself, my sanity, and my life.