Let me preface this by saying that I’m a pragmatist when it comes to the creative process. Often, I hear friends talk about characters who want to do this, or refuse to do that, as if those fictional beings held the reins. I might give a knowing smile or nod, but down deep I’m thinking whack job. A writer writes. Characters are just that, figments of that writer’s imagination. They do what the writer tells them to do; no more, no less. After this morning, however, I might have to slightly revise that stance.

What just happened? I sat down this morning to begin a new chapter in Last Thursday, my current manuscript-in-progress. Normally I prefer to start writing each day in media res, stopping just shy of a cliffhanger so I feel pulled back into the work come next dawn. Since I had just wrapped up the first two chapters for submission to my critique group the day before, this morning it was blank-page-ville. I procrastinated, I whimpered, finally I settled on listing what I thought needed to happen next and why. Somewhere in the middle of my prevaricating, a beautiful thing happened; my words nudged me out of the way and started spilling out on their own.

Maybe I got in touch with some hidden wellspring of creativity lurking in a cobwebbed corner of my brain, but today’s scene turn was unexpected. I watched in astonishment as it fairly gushed out, and not in ways that I had imagined. What was supposed to be a somber affair turned into a noisy free-for-all, a festival of characters all talking over one another. Hell, it was even a little funny.

I’d like to say it was a brilliant piece of writing, but it’s still too fresh for me to judge it. Probably, it wasn’t. By this time tomorrow, enough time will have passed for me to have some sense of how well it fits into the overall story, and even if I end up dramatically revising it or ditching the scene altogether, my sense is that something of the spirit of it will survive in the form of new insights into my characters and their relationships to one another. I stand before you, more of a believer than before. Maybe there are times when the hot line from the subconscious to the keyboard lights up, and the author stands aside and takes dictation. It was an exhilarating feeling, one I wouldn’t mind having again.

Gentle reader, what’s your take? Is all this hoo-hah about books writing themselves just that, or can you relate? I’m teetering on the brink. I need convincing.