fiction - How to manage getting depressed by what my main character goes through?

I'm writing a war (sci-fi) novel. The MC dies in the end. It's not as thoroughly depressing as "All Quiet on the Western Front", but Remarque's work is definitely one source of inspiration.

Now, partway through writing, I find that writing is too painful for me to continue. It's not that I'm writing a particularly depressing passage - on the contrary. At this point my MC is eager and full of hope. What gets to me is the projection of the story: there are many ups, there's love and camaraderie, but the ultimate trend is down, until finally, inevitably, the MC is killed.

I desperately want to write this story, but at the same time, I find myself unable to sit down and continue writing it. It's not a writer's block: I have whole scenes sitting in my head, dialogues, you name it. It's that every scene I write brings my character one step closer to his inevitable death.

How do I manage this/get through this, and continue writing? I want to write this story - not another, and I don't want it lighter and softer - I want it to tear at the reader. (Of course, the reader, unlike me, would not know the end until it happens.)

Answer

I'm not sure that you do get through this. A story is an experience. To write the story, you have to live the experience, emotionally at least. When a story does not ring true, I think that is usually because the writer chickened out of really putting themselves through the emotions, of fully immersing themselves in the experience of the story.

I remember hearing it said of some poet or another than when a visitor asked the poet's daughter where her father was, she replied, "Daddy is upstairs, hurting himself." She meant, writing.

Some writers seem to do it to lay to rest the fears that haunt them. That seems to be the case with Stephen King. Sometimes, in other words, the writer experiences the story and its emotions and all the pain and fear that go with them, and can only escape from them by writing them down.

For others, it would seem, the difficulty is that they would (like most healthy people) turn away from the things they fear and focus on the good things of the moment. Writing then requires that you force yourself to imaginatively visit those things, in detail, and for a long time. If you have a choice about whether to do this or not, that is going to require a lot of courage.

Maybe the question you should be asking, therefore, is how to find the courage to put yourself through the pain of finishing your story.