Stephanie Gayle

The writing is not going so well lately. All my words seem insufficient. Really. They're not doing the job I'm setting them to do. Worse, I have a conversation that just is not the tense, crackling exchange of wits it was meant to be. I find myself arguing with my characters. "Why are you suddenly being likeable? I did not cast you to be charming. Be a curmudgeon, damn it!" The characters then turn around and say I'm the one who wrote them, so it must be my fault. It's a good point. The kind of point that pliable characters would not make. They would apologize for the error of their ways and start acting the way I expected.
You would think that as an author I would have total control over my work, that the prose would flow from mind to keyboard in a tranquil stream of genius. You would be wrong.