Mental Hopscotch

Yesterday I finished the revision for SAVING ZOE (September '07), allowed myself a ten-minute break (stretch, yawn, roll my neck from side to side), and then got back to book #7, my as of yet untitled WIP.

I guess I can be a little obsessive.

Not in the check the stove twenty times before leaving the house kind of way- more in a- I've created these characters and I need to give them an ending, sort of way.

I'm a method writer. I discovered this over the weekend when I was volunteering alongside Karen Kay for "Ask an Author" at my local RWA meeting. I never really think about how I write, I just sit down and do it. But when a fellow writer broached the topic of "director" versus "method"- I realized I'm the latter.

When I wrote about Rio in Art Geeks and Prom Queens, I was Rio. Same with Alex in Faking 19, Hailey in Fly Me to the Moon, Winter in Kiss & Blog, Echo in Saving Zoe, and Anne, Ellie, Jade, and Lola in Laguna Cove. During the writing of each of those books, I became those characters, experiencing all of their trials and tribulations until the very end.

In the real world this would make me a multiple personality. But in the worlds I create, it's just the way I do it.

So when my mom called yesterday, after finishing her early copy of Kiss & Blog, and said, "Inside, you really are a teenager!"

I thought- Lady, you have no idea!