Friday 1 May 2009

People are wrong. Authors don't write stories.


Characters hijack an author's mind and force the author to write with a sword to their neck. Or in my case, a paw of a cat (who won't be a cat in the rewrite but we're not going into that now).

Here I am, at my little laptop, ready to crack on with the rest of chapter 10, about Acelia, the bounty hunter (who has carpet in her ship). I've got it all planned out. She'll dock, have a few problems at the spaceport thanks to a previous client, then she'll get on to tracking down Sophie.

But no. One of the cats from Catopia (I kid you not, at least in this version) demands to magically appear on Acelia's ship. It wants to guide Acelia to the correct path.

My muse is bent over, tears streaming down her cheeks as this fluffy thing sits on my shoulder, claw out, going 'write! write!'. What's a writer to do? I'll do it, just to keep the cat-not-cat happy. Just keep quiet on the fact that I can change this chapter in next revision, ok? Who knows where this strange cat-not-cat will lead me...

(image taken by Anna Cervova, downloaded from http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=399 )

Edited 10 minutes later to add: Nope, now not a cat. Now a Light wants in on the game. *throws hands up in the air*. A Light!

Not a light bulb type of light. A Light: a human like being, who is clothed in one solid colour and glows the same colour. A Light who has the power to animate molecules. A Light.

This is mutiny, I tell you. True mutiny. Sometimes I wonder why I sit and roughly plan what's going to happen. It changes the moments my fingers hit the keyboard.

2 comments:

Danyelle L. said...

*grin* I feel the same way. I'm not sure whether or not it's a good thing that the figments of our imagination tend to be so bossy. But, hey, at least they're still talking to us, right?

Michelle D. Argyle said...

More chocolate, maybe????

Chocolate can always lighten the bossiness. :)