A Literary out-of-body experience

Recently had a first for me.

I'd been working on my novel, and had spent hours redesigning her, as Joseph Campbell calls it, "special weapon," trying to redesign the scenario by which she comes by it, and by which she first uses it.

I put so much effort into it, I felt like I was THERE in the alley, hearing/seeing bullets, seeing her heroics.
Moreso than usual.

To the point that later, when reading a bit of Dragonquest before American Government started, a tragic moment in the story, which usually would have made me a LITTLE unhappy for the characters, almost brought me to TEARS.

It's like I'd so primed my imagination in the act of creation, that diving into someone else's work made me experience it on a deeper level than I ever had.

Makes me wanna figure out how to get myself there more often, not only for my own writings, but so that I can go back and re-read novels that have been collecting dust on my shelf for awhile, and get a vastly deeper experience of them.