Secrets of the Heart was very cathartic for me in the beginning. I started writing it one weekend when I was really stressed over work and desperately needed an escape. Writing is an outlet for me, but like I said, I usually can't do it when I'm upset about something. That weekend, I was able to push it all to the back of my mind and just write. I churned out the first couple chapters of that story almost effortlessly and got so into it, I was able to forget all the crap on my mind. It was amazing. And then real life got in the way again and it took me four years to finish the thing LOL.
I don't usually write stories that are based directly on my own personal experiences, mostly because my life hasn't been interesting or tragic enough to make good fan fiction (not the kind I like to write, anyway), but every once in awhile, art imitates life and life imitates art. Curtain Call wasn't intended to be personal at all, but it became that way when a friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer as I was writing that story. She died the day after I posted the ending. I wasn't sure whether that would help or hurt it, and in the end, I think it was a little of both. It did make it easier for me to relate to my characters and have some idea of what they were going through, and I think it also gave me a way to work through my own emotions and sort of prepare myself for what was inevitably coming. I became kind of stoic and detached while writing the story, especially toward the end, while I was very emotional in real life. It was definitely cathartic.
