There's one thing that I've never heard about being a writer. I've read a lot, and heard many writers speak and give interviews and so on. But I've never heard a single writer - not one talk about how hard it is to kill off a character.
Not just any character, mind you - but a character you've been writing for a while and for reasons of story you have to kill them off. In my big SciFi Novel I killed off two characters that either, I knew weren't going to stay dead (this is scifi, after all) or they weren't actually dead. Both times, I balled my eyes out just because my head was inside the heads of the characters that didn't know what was going on. I cried like these were real people in my life. I was actually scared for them!
Tongiht I had to kill off another character of mine. This time, in TheKey (if you're not reading, head over and catch up! SHEESH!) I killed off someone I have only been writing since early January. But still, because he was a member of a group that had grown tight through many a life-threatening experience, I was there, too. The hardest most stark sentence I've ever had to write was just two words long. Thinking about the words makes me want to cry. I'm starting to cry right now. He's not coming back. He's gone. No more. And what makes it all the more painful is that he's left unfinished business. He's got family and belongings that were left far from home. Things weren't set right in his life before he died - not by a long shot. And even though I wrote that life and death for him, I still feel like it wasn't up to me. It sounds ridiculous to admit, but it just doesn't feel fair.
Jesus, I have to stop typing now. God Damn. Does Stephen King go through this shit?
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