I'm working on improving my writing and storytelling (I read mostly sci-fi and fantasy, and am writing fantasy). My creative writing is shit right now. It is, by turns, horribly bland and empty of emotion, or, when I'm doing really well, entirely too derivative of the works and styles of those I read. But I'm trying to keep writing anyway. Besides, I have deadlines of a sort. Good writing or miserable, each new chapter goes out in to the world at its appointed time. My audience is very small, but attentive all the same.

Currently, I'm working on learning to write pain, with an emphasis on young characters. That's the weakest thread in the story I'm writing now. The action's all there, but it reads like an emotionless lump.

To that end, I'm currently re-reading The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. Dunno if my writing's improving, but I have that nice perpetually-on-the-edge-of-tears, feel-both-alive-and-empty-at-the-same-time thing going for me right now. It's awful. And wonderful. I kind-of love it.

I'm looking for other recommendations in this vein -- exciting, emotionally powerful stories of strength, growth, and life brought out of weakness, pain, fear, and death.

Oh brave readers of bookit, I ask thee: make me weep, make me whimper, make me see and love the beauty in life by reading of its absence. (And, not coincidentally, help me learn to write words that you feel rather than read). Recommend me a book!

/u/CompletePlague resumes sitting quietly in the dark corner, rocking backward and forward while hugging his knees to my chest and steeling himself for the additional torment you all are about to send his way. The candle-light flickers. The small computer speakers continue their beautiful lament -- every sad movie's best moments blurring together. Evening begets night, night begets sleep, and sleep brings nightmares of pain and weakness. Dreams beget morning, morning begets writing, and then it shall be the readers' turn to weep.

^{melodramatic? Who, me?}