My books are usually not super high angst. I mean, they have their moments, but I’m not the type of writer that will rip your heart out, stomp on it, and then give it back to you.

Maybe that’s why it never struck me how writing difficult scenes can affect you emotionally. I just finished the first draft of Omega’s Power, book 8 in the Irresistible Omegas series, and this book was unusually tough to write for me. At first, I thought it was because I’d made plot errors or because the characters weren’t cooperating, but that wasn’t really the case.

It didn’t hit me until I was messaging with my editor about it. I was warning her about some tough scenes in the book, and when I wrote that, it registered with me that they were really tough. Like, emotionally exhausting. I put a lot of emotions in this book and in those particular scenes, and it left me exhausted. I simply never realized it until I put it into words. Isn’t that interesting?

I have published well over twenty books so far, and I’ve written about thirty-five, by my estimate (there’s a whole stack of books in my Mac that will probably never see the light of day). Some of these were super easy to write. My record is ten days. Yup, one of my books was written in only ten days. But others were sloooooow going. Sometimes that was because I messed up in the plot or because the characters were being stubborn. It happens, you know?

But now I realize that other times, it was because the book drained me emotionally. If a book contains heavy scenes, like deaths, grieving, or someone dealing with severe trauma, it impacts you as author. You can’t write those scenes without putting your heart and soul into them, as true emotions make a book often authentic and real. But it does take a toll on the author, and I have no idea why that never registered with me this deeply.

No wonder this book took me longer. These scenes were brutal on my emotions, especially since I was already exhausted after an amazing but tiring GRL. Lesson learned. Hopefully, because I’m a slow learner when it comes to self care…