As a writer, I sometimes live disconnected from the world my body actually inhabits.  I watch people,  notice their gestures, analyze how they sit or perch on a chair, assess how they dress, listen to their conversations.  I’ve learned to dig into the belly of my purse for my notebook and write these observations because, otherwise, they’ll be fuzzy-edged memories. Other times, characters are moving about in my head, talking to one another or to me.

Writing splits me in half. No, maybe even not half.  It makes me two people. My writer-person and my world-person struggle to inhabit my body simultaneously.

When I was struggling to finish my novel, I’d feel frozen until I could sit at my laptop and become Leah.  To feel her life unfold in me, so I could release her and let her thoughts flow out of my fingers tips. Let her press the keys on the keyboard without too much thought. Not thoughtless, though. What I mean is, I couldn’t permit my world-self to step in and critique her thoughts. I had to allow her to exist in me so she could tell her story.

By the early morning, I’d feel emotionally exhausted. Not from the writing, but from the being. From being a vessel that could contain this woman’s story and have to open myself to her life.

It was only then that world-person could fall into bed and sleep. Dreaming, of course, of the next chapter.