Writing is a place I go. The journey starts with a deep breath that pushes out all other places, places of rush and to-do lists and expectations of others. My writing-place then starts to come alive.

I fly over the forests of my creation and take in the world. It’s always the same path, the same forest I see. It’s like falling into a map that contains another reality. Then I hear the characters. Feel them. Become them. They are all remarkably real in my writing-place. Sometimes I distance myself, look at them from all angles, to see if they would pass the credibility test. Will a reader find her way inside these make-believe people and love them as I do?

What I see always surprises me. I always see me. Going to my writing place is like walking into a hall of mirrors and being reflected infinitely in the people looking back at me. That’s lucky – I’m the only reader I really have to please!

So I write. The characters lead the way and always raise strong opposition if I try to force them down a different path. Sometimes we struggle and toss and turn and tumble and come out gasping for breath – but afterwards my chest is filled with the glow of victory that nothing in the outside world, the-not-writing-world, can tarnish. Even after I leave and get on with rush and to-do lists and, well, life, I know that writing is a place I can always go.