How you personify lonliness

Liam writes…

I am a person centered therapist and I love how you somehow manage to tune into human suffering so completely. All of your books seem to touch on isolation and despair so well. I just wondered how do you encapsulate fear and dread so well in your books. I've never read a book where the fear and paranoia stays with me once i close the book. There is no peace, I just always want to know what happens.

And i usually avoid human suffering but with your books i cant turn away.

How do you do it?

Thanks,
You dont have to reply, I just wanted to let you know how much I admire your writing prowess

Michelle Replies…

Dear Liam,

You kindly said that I didn’t need to reply, but I do want to thank you for your message, which I really appreciate.  It’s a strange thing to spend one’s time evoking human suffering and yet at the same time trying to keep the reader turning the pages – but it’s very satisfying if one can achieve it.  Perhaps that’s because it’s a form both of expression and communication.  As to the “how do I do it?”, well, for me it’s a mixture of the objective – ie research, planning, plotting, pacing, etc – and the intensely subjective.  By that I mean identifying strongly with the protagonist, so that I have them at the back of my mind always, including when I’m not writing.  Plus lots and lots of re-writing.  My Gothic stories seem to need more re-writing than my other books, and I think that’s because they are the most psychologically complex, and it takes time for stuff to come up from the unconscious.

Again, thanks so much for getting in touch.  As I do battle with the re-write for my rainforest Gothic story, your comments are very encouraging!

Best wishes, Michelle