My Relationship With My Characters

Readers, be warned. You're about to have a glimpse into the mind of a writer.

It's a scary place. Writing is just a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

My characters and I have an interesting--some would call it abusive--relationship. They are all wonderful people. Or elves. Or goblins. They all have hopes and dreams, a few of them have lovers, a few are tough as nails, and some are pansies. They sometimes enjoy the worlds I create for them.

Right now they're all pissed off at me. See, as a writer, it is my job to put my characters through emotional, physical, and mental hell so that you, dear reader, might have good book to read. My characters do not like this. In fact, there's talk of unionization. I think it already happened with the last incident.

So I'm working on edits, right? Making the book as polished as possible before I send it off to any editor. In the middle, there's a section that feels like something is missing. Can't place my finger on it. Then one of my characters says: "Oh, yeah, there's a civil war going on in this section of the country, because that's the only way to flesh this part of the book out to what you need it to be."

I pimp-slapped him.

But he was right. 10000 words of right. That's what I'm doing right now, adding in about 10000 words to my story in order to flesh out part of the midsection. All because Emakar couldn't keep his dang mouth shut!

The main character hates me with a fiery passion. The crap I put him through is, to me, hilarious. To him it just sucks. I mean really sucks. I tell him it's to entertain you guys, but he never seems to accept that as motivation for pushing through the stuff I throw at him. Instead he moans about lost love or some such nonsense. Pansy.

So there's your glimpse into the mind of a writer. Yes. I am insane. It's the only possible defense against reality.