The Lives of My Characters

 I’m working on my second novel while I wait for feedback on the first one. I entered the first chapter of the first novel in a competition. I like to keep my expectations low, so I have no plans to win. An honorable mention would be nice, and I’ll keep you informed about what happens. In the mean time I’m loving working on another story. It’s always fun to see how my characters take a life of their own. I’ve written an outline for this book, as I’ve done for the other book ideas that I have. Before I work on a scene, I usually run through it in my head. This is what keeps me up at night, or what I space off and think about during boring meetings at work. When I sit down to write, between the outline and my imagining the scene, I’m ready to work. What ends up happening, is that the scene goes in a completely different direction than I expected once I start writing. Things I planned to have a character say or do, no longer fits. The dialogue will go in an opposite direction from one minute to the next. For those who don’t write it may be hard to imagine how invisible people can come to life and tell you where they want to go. But for me, it’s one of the things that I love about writing. It makes my characters so real that I begin to think of them as friends or family. Even if I’m never published…scratch that because I’ll self publish eventually. Even if I’m never a bestselling, block buster author, I’ll continue to write just for the joy of watching my characters evolve. It’s fun to see where my imagination will go, and it’s the reason why I’ve been putting pen to paper since I was six and wrote my first book with wall paper as the cover. Writing is like an addiction, and once you’re hooked its damn near impossible to stop.