The Feeling

I started writing ONE on August 1st. It started with an idea, and very, very quickly picked up character to embody it. A girl and a boy - Merrin and Elias - who had grown up in the same tough situation, and handled it very differently.

I wrote a scene, a long one, two thousand words long, that first day.
This first scene-that's-now-a-whole-chapter was one of discovery, exhilaration, romance, and devastation all at once.

That night, after I finally closed my computer and sighed with the relief of this scene finally having WORDS, this idea finally having skin and bones to it, I went to bed and woke up with it.

 The Feeling.

Yep. Writing that scene gave me The Feeling, without a doubt. Then and there, I fell in love with the story. But more important than that, The Feeling allowed me to believe in Merrin and Elias, in how awesome they are, in what they can do. Enough to spend hundreds of hours writing the whole darn thing out, word for painstaking word, to give it form and shape, and way way way more soul than even that first scene has.

 It's not obsession, exactly - it's more like the story is bonded to my heart, that the characters have taken up residence inside my head, and both have made it very clear they're not going anywhere for a very long time.

Now, sixty-five thousand words later, two and a half months later, and in the homestretch of finishing the first messy, messy draft, that scene is almost exactly the same as it was the day I wrote it.

I love Nik and Davis from THE TRAVELERS - yes, absolutely. And maybe it's just because I've spent three times as long with them, revising them and their story, getting to know them, worming through their brains, watching them struggle and then struggle some more.  But my love for them is more...familiar? Fond? Motherly, even, maybe? Ardent, and deep, to be sure...but it's not the same as the way I feel about ONE.

Merrin and Elias - right now, my love for them, and their story, and the degree to which I'm rooting for them - it's FIERCE. And it's desperate, like I'll die if they don't make it. Whenever I think about them and their stories, both before and after they met each other, my heart twists.


It's The Feeling, multiplied a dozen times over. And it's truly incredible.

When did you get The Feeling about your story? Was it a slow burn, or hit-you-like-a-Mack-truck sensation? Do you still have it?