Facing the Fire: Writing from Rage

The first thing I felt when I started writing The Dark Mage was urgency. Not pressure or ambition—urgency. I needed to get this story out of me, to let Ren’wyn out of me. Because she had been making herself so small for so long, and I knew that kind of smallness too well. She needed to be free.

To cry.

To rage.

It was never a secret to me that The Dark Mage held parts of my own soul. Writing Ren’wyn gave me permission to loosen the grip on everything I’d been bottling for years. All the hurt. The injustice. The sickening shame that rides the shoulders of trauma survivors like me. The anger that coils in the pit of my stomach like a winter storm. The kind that only stirs when it’s needed—and when it does, it’s precise. Cold. Devastating.

Ren’wyn’s magic is a metaphor from my own body. She strips life from those who harm the innocent. She fears it. She questions it. She calls herself a monster.

And I’ve felt that, too.

I’ve wondered what it means to have anger this sharp inside me. Whether it makes me unlovable. Whether it's safe. Whether I’ll hurt the people I love if I let it out.

But I’ve learned this: it’s not wrong to hurt.

It’s not wrong to rage.

And it’s not wrong to write from inside the fire.

Writing While Still Hurting

I didn’t wait to feel whole before I started writing The Dark Mage. I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t confident. I was holding so much inside that it spilled out onto the page.

I didn’t write chronologically, and I didn’t write because I had a polished plot outline. I wrote because I was full of emotion—and that emotion needed somewhere to go.

Ren’wyn’s story let me explore things I couldn’t say aloud.

Her rage let me express my own.

Her regrets mirrored mine.

And Fael… Fael reminded me what it looks like to wield rage with justice. He’s brutal. He’s fire. He knows what it is to burn and still choose kindness. He lets me name what I’ve feared about myself and see that it’s still worthy of love.

There’s something sacred about that.

Anger Is Not Cruelty

My rage doesn’t look how you might expect.

It’s not loud or hot.

It’s cold—quiet and coiled until it breaks loose like a blizzard.

It comes out to defend the parts of me that were never allowed to speak.

It comes out for children, for the vulnerable, for the ones who are hurt and silenced.

Ren’wyn’s rage is like mine.

She tries to be good. She tries to be kind.

But when she’s faced with cruelty, she chooses to become dangerous.

She uses death not as revenge, but as mercy for the wounded and justice for the wicked.

That felt honest to write.

It felt… freeing.

A Word to the One Still Hurting

I know what it’s like to have anger you’re afraid to name. Especially if you grew up in systems that praised compliance and called silence “holy.” Especially if your pain was never validated and your needs always came second.

But I want to say this clearly:

Anger is not bad.

Cruelty is bad.

Know the difference—and use your anger wisely.

And if you're Christian, like me? Remember, even Jesus got angry. He flipped tables in the temple. He confronted injustice. His anger changed things.

So let your characters rage if they need to.

Let them make mistakes.

Let them feel anger in ways that build instead of destroy.

Let them teach you that fire can be sacred.

And if you are hurting—let it out.

Even the messy, “unacceptable” parts.

Let them breathe.

Let them speak.

Let them become story.

Because writing from the fire isn’t a failure of healing.

It’s a part of healing.

And it is powerful.