When characters take over!

I don't know about you but I always find that life (and by life I mean writing), goes most awry when you least need it to. Take the week before last for example. As you know, ordinarily I'm beavering away at the day job Monday to Wednesday and living the writing life every other spare second. Well, that particular week was a little different and that apparently was all the excuse life needed to go off on a tangent and send my meticulous routine free falling out of control.

Thanks to a willing colleague and a sympathetic boss I was able to work every day and thus free up the hours needed to take part in the eagerly anticipated Books And The City Spring Blogger Event this week. Worried about losing writing hours I had planned to work on Novel Number 3 before work, during lunch and then in the evenings. Smug in the knowledge that I wouldn't lose either the flow or too much time, I approached the week feeling optimistic.

However, my main character had other ideas. Every time I reached for my pen or committed my fingers to the keyboard, there she was, tapping me on the shoulder and whispering in my ear. I ignored her for a couple of days and hummed to myself to drown out her incessant droning, but all to no avail.

By midweek I'd had enough. We sat down together and I listened to what she had been trying to tell me and begrudgingly, within a couple of minutes, I was ready to admit that she was right. Novel Number 3 isn't about her at all. Novel Number 4 is though and had I ploughed relentlessly on then there were a great many plot pieces that simply wouldn't fit further down the line.

I have tried to explain to colleagues and friends about how 'real' our characters are, how they really do exist in some parallel universe, but I'm afraid they fear for my mental health now and give me a wide birth in the corridors, but you lot understand. Don't you?

H x