I'd call it: Experience

I like quotes.  Growing up, I always had one to 'live by'.  I still find quotes inspiring.  I still collect them.  Here's one of my favorites:

"Tell me and I will listen.  Show me and I will see.  Let me experience, and I will learn."

When I write I don't want to simply tell a story, or even show it.  I want to share an experience.  I'll never be a Hemminway or Fitzgerald, but I try my best to find words that convey the lives of my characters in a way that feels . . . lived.

While writing Painted Boots this was sometimes easy--like when Kyle and Aspen meet for the first time.  We all know that twitter-pated butterfly feeling of new love, right?  But it was sometimes almost too much for me--like when Aspen is attacked in the hall at school.  I didn't like revisiting the memory that inspired that scene.

Throughout Painted Boots I put myself into each experience then wrote it as best I could from the inside, looking out through Aspen's eyes.  It was challenging, rewarding and sometimes scary . . . and so very worth it.