and in the middle of september ...

I think as writers, we all experience different degrees of what has referred to as "bleeding" - when our characters who matter just so much to us end up influencing everything we feel during a particular time frame, be it a day or an hour, or even just the 4 minutes it takes to finish a song. I think we've all experienced that moment in time when we are not ourselves but our characters - a walk we take, a song we are singing along to. We have those moments of FLASH - when something that is going to happen to our characters is as clear as day or when something that did happen once to them is laid bare before us and we know why so and so does what it is they do. We have those while writing, we have those while dreaming, and while simply driving down the road, listening to the radio.

Today ... I was flipping through the stations on my way back from a home visit and caught the end of Daughtry's September. Now I love this song. I've always associated it with how Mike has moved on from losing Marc. But the images I had from him were so overwhelming I actually had to blink tears away. Not because the song is that powerful, but because the images were. As a writer, I so often run into this wall because I feel there is no way in the universe that I am able to translate what I see in my mind into mere words. And yet, to me, there is nothing more powerful than words.

Moments like this are almost daily occurrences for me. It's one reason I do blogs for my characters and one reason I don't care if anyone ever comments. But it was just a moving moment that I felt like sharing and I was wondering what kinds of experiences you've had recently that are like that. What's stopped you dead in your tracks as you watched a character you adore in your mind?