Sophiescribe asked Elizabeth Wein:

How did writing books like Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire affect you emotionally? Reading it was devastatingly sad (it remains the only book to have made me cry) and since an author is so much closer to their books than the reader, was it particularly difficult to write for this reason?

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[<spoiler>Hi there, sorry it's taken me so long to answer this! Yes, both books were tremendously difficult to work with - I basically sobbed for about three weeks after finishing CNV. My husband commented, "Please can you wait at least 6 months before you write another book." Interestingly, because I am so much inside the characters' heads, it was easier, from an emotional point of view, to write Julie's section. I was never without hope, not completely, because *she* is never without hope. Maddie's section was more difficult. There are moments that still make me cry: Maddie's dream of flying Julie home was one of the hardest scenes to write and I kind of put it off because I *knew* it was going to make me sob. (And it did. Gutwrenchingly, for twenty minutes.)

When Maddie says, "I'll just keep writing, shall I? Because that wasn't the end. It wasn't even a pause." - That was really just *me* writing a comment to myself... and it turned out to work for Maddie, too, so I left it in.

With Rose Under Fire, there were other difficulties. I put off doing the research for a long time because I was so worried about what I'd find. I had a stack of prisoner memoirs from Ravensbrueck and I didn't want to read any of them. But once I got going, it was fine, because they are all beautiful and harsh and curiously hopeful. I hope I've captured that in Rose's narrative.

The other thing I had trouble with was *food*. I was so much aware of the constant hunger of my characters, and the real people on which they were based, that I had a hard time throwing away any food, even when it went moldy or stale. I've always been a bit prudent this way but it became *painful* while writing Rose Under Fire - I was suddenly aware of how very wasteful I am. On the one hand, this is a good thing; on the other, I was getting hung up and extreme about it.

So yes - creating these books definitely has an emotional effect on the writer. I am every bit as invested as the reader, possibily more so. Rose Under Fire in particular has left me with a sort of false PTSD - I can't stand striped dresses (they look like prison uniforms), I can't bear to waste food, the Eiffel Tower and the smell of chocolate make me cry. Once, even, the rattle of a broken radiator in a church made me duck because it sounded like a flying bomb! HOW DO I EVEN KNOW WHAT A FLYING BOMB SOUNDS LIKE?

Writing books can be a very strange and emotionally compromising business.</spoiler> (hide spoiler)]

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