Why is it that after sitting on the verge of sleep. Nodding so badly that I decided to go to bed before giving myself a whip-lash. The lights go off, I lay me down, My character pops up and DEMANDS tht I hear his story. I tell him, "Go away, I'll talk to you in the morning!" But will he go? NO, NO, NO!!!!

Someday i'm going to get wise, stop arguing with him and just take his dictation. BUT WHY CAN'T HE LET ME SLEEP! he's not even the main character. I've been trying to ignore him but now he follows me around work chanting, "Write it, write it, write it...."

"I don't have time!" I tell him, " I have to work!"

"You should have written it when I told you."

"But I need to sleep so I can do my job and pay my bills."

"But you didn't sleep did you?"

"No, and that's your fault so leave me alone!"

Sometimes I worry that these characters are too real to me. I feel like I know Jacob in perticular, though his daughter was supposed to be the main character.

My characters are nice. If I don't attend to them in five minutes while falling asleep or thirty seconds while in class or band, I forget that they exist and they go away and I'm happy again. Until I remember that I forgot, then I get pissed at the frog-faced band director and want to scream at her for making me forget because these are my friends I'm neglecting and I'm not a musician. *pant, pant*

I can't say they never give me fits - mine just do it differently. They seem to take on lives of their own! I have a terrible time containing them within the borders of the story I am writing. They just get these scatterbrained ideas and want to go off on thier own without ever consulting the creator about the whole thing. It's frustrating when they need to go one way to make the story work out right, but insist on going another altogether! I keep having to round them up and set them straight again!

You know every time I start talking to someone about my story or about a character I learn something new. I don't think this story is ever going to be finished! Every time I try to write something I get lost in getting further aquainted.

Makes it hard for people in ducky's situation to send stories to someone via email.

Ducky, you might want to take a look at http://www.sff.net/people/Dalton-Woodbury/sffw.htp

But I'm just rambling and... just a second, they're fighting... I better go and strighten things out ... say, does anyone know where I can find the code for all those happy faces?

Just a

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Please, no one encourage her to buy a notebook! I packed up some of her things when she moved and we probably found more than a dozen!! What you need, Ducky, is a planner!! Something that pages can be added to or taken out of!

I like keeping my old notebooks. I don't miss them now that I can write on computer, but it sure is fun to look at them. I recently started keeping a journal and that really requires paper and pen, I think. Doing it on a palm pilot or similar might work, but for sheer speed an non-interference with "the process" you can't beat paper and pen.

Of course, I am actually able to write something each night I stay up to do so. I get a little bit added to my story each session. It is exciting and fulfilling to get words typed on the 'puter. I feel like my head is brimming with ideas and then I can finally dump some out at the end of the day. I love this work! I just wish I could do it and manage to get a little more sleep!

As a wise man once said to me:

"You spend your time in imaginary worlds telling stories about people who don't really exist doing impossible things. Of COURSE you're crazy!"

Hmmmm food for thought.

Ok I suffer from the characters whispering in my ear syndrom as well. Does anyone else have this problem though. A scene will play itself out in my head and if I do not go and write it as it is happening, say I put it off until the next day, does your scene lose something? Is it less effective or not as "good" as it was before when you thought it out? Verses writng it as it keeps you awake. If I do that the scene is great.

Shawn

I never find that to be true. I find that if I have an idea to write about, it's mainly a matter of applying technical standards (so exacting that they are specific to myself, so far as I know) untill the piece seems good in my sight.

The reason you feel you've lost something if you write the scene four or five days after you first thought about it is because that something probably wasn't there to begin with.

I've been doing quite a lot of study in the real, hard structure of writing prose, and I've come to believe that while writing is creative, the process of creating great writing is as technical and structured as an algebra problem.

I said a few weeks back in a discussion about writing drafts that I didn't write them because I thought the story never changed or got better. I know now why that was true for me then--I didn't know what I should be changing, or looking for. I had what I wrote and I didn' know how to improve it, so my tinkering with it never made it any better. So now I'm of the thinking that good strong writing often comes from editting and looking at your work a second or even third time.

It's a balance between spontaneity and structure.