The other day, I was preparing dinner and I made a stupid mistake. As I was cutting toward myself, the knife easily slipped through the meat and directly into the palm of my hand, not stopping until it hit bone. Ouch is an understatement. Besides being stitched up after surgery while I was unconscious, this was my first experience with stitches, and definitely my first ER visit. Not cool.
I was so mad at myself, I couldn't stand it. However, as the ER doctor was numbing my hand, I realized something. This wasn't such a bad thing. My very real pain is exactly how my characters feel when they've been stabbed. My close brush with passing out is exactly what would happen when my characters get close to swooning. My completely numb fingers is exactly how my hero (Book two in Touched by Fire series) goes through life. Instead of harnessing the negative, which was easy, I turned the experience into an unexpected opportunity.
The rest of the time, I spent experimenting with my numb fingers. What could I pick up? How much pressure should I expend to do such a thing? How did it feel when someone touched me or when I touched them? So many answered questions from real experiences. Now, if I could go back in time, I would absolutely pull out a cutting board instead of trying to take a shortcut, but since my time machine is out of gas, I'm just going to use this as a research moment. After this experience, you can be assured, someone in my book is going to get stabbed. *insert evil laugh*
As I go through my days, I'm going to keep searching for the unexpected opportunities hidden in my good and bad experiences. What about you?
I was so mad at myself, I couldn't stand it. However, as the ER doctor was numbing my hand, I realized something. This wasn't such a bad thing. My very real pain is exactly how my characters feel when they've been stabbed. My close brush with passing out is exactly what would happen when my characters get close to swooning. My completely numb fingers is exactly how my hero (Book two in Touched by Fire series) goes through life. Instead of harnessing the negative, which was easy, I turned the experience into an unexpected opportunity.
The rest of the time, I spent experimenting with my numb fingers. What could I pick up? How much pressure should I expend to do such a thing? How did it feel when someone touched me or when I touched them? So many answered questions from real experiences. Now, if I could go back in time, I would absolutely pull out a cutting board instead of trying to take a shortcut, but since my time machine is out of gas, I'm just going to use this as a research moment. After this experience, you can be assured, someone in my book is going to get stabbed. *insert evil laugh*
As I go through my days, I'm going to keep searching for the unexpected opportunities hidden in my good and bad experiences. What about you?
RSS Feed