A Paradox for the Fiction Writer:

We have to become our characters!
Passionate, creative, exciting writing (for both writer and reader) demands that a writer get out of self and become the character who is rising up out of her unconscious.

The paradox:
While your characters are you because they are born of your creativity, none of them are you … at least not the you who you perceive yourself as being.

Writing taps into the deeper, often hidden aspects of self.
This is true even if you are writing a memoir. You must leave the limited bounds of self and become the character waiting to be born. This is writing from the inside out; such writing ignites the emotional life of a writer's characters.

In his acceptance speech for the Pulitzer Prize, William Faulkner said, “... the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself... alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the sweat and the agony.”

Write on!!