Beautiful!
But, she realised, being brutally honest with herself, most of the emotions she allowed herself to invest in her work were selfish ones, more to do with her desire to be the best than anything more empathic. The more sympathetic emotions her stories engendered in her made her feel more uncomfortable – uncomfortable enough that she avoided putting them into words. That, in large part, explained her intolerance for, and avoidance of, the human interest stories at which Clark excelled.
Mentally bracing her shoulders, she realised that, if she was going to stand a chance of winning a Kerth next year, she would have to allow herself to embrace those difficult emotions. More than that, she would have to lower her barriers enough to articulate the way she felt, sharing her thoughts and feelings with the Planet’s readers. It demanded of her a level of emotional honesty that, up until now, she had resisted. Wanting to write as well as Clark meant letting the emotions in and going beyond being the logical investigator who saw things only in rational terms. It meant deliberately searching beyond the crimes and scandals she uncovered and illuminating the human costs of the darknesses she wrote about.
