Just a tidbit for today. I think my characters are trying to kill me.
Last night, no less than five character and plot points resolved themselves in my head. While I was driving.
My fellow authors might know the “grab your notebook” impulse that took hold of me, but I was good! No writing while driving. I kept my hands on the wheel. On a good day, my brain has a hard time holding onto three ideas for more than a few minutes. I reduced the thoughts to their essentials and repeated them to myself.
When I reached my destination, the first thing I did was open my notebook and pen. By that time I only remembered four of the points.
In the wee hours of this morning I woke to a tornado warning. In the distance, I could faintly hear the sirens. I dragged my quilt into the closet and sat with my dog. Asher, my gray cat, was cool and calm, so I wasn’t greatly concerned.
And there, in the closet, in the middle of a tornado warning with wind and rain driving against the house, I remembered the fifth point.
Maybe I am too blasé about tornadoes. I left my refuge and got my notebook.
jubilare 
January 30th, 2013 at 8:40 am
Perhaps that 5th plot idea was trying to save your life!
January 30th, 2013 at 9:22 am
If I have a character who would try to do that, it would probably be the one with that plot-point. She’s good like that. But luring your author out among windows during a tornado warning isn’t the best plan for preserving her life. I can only assume she considered my cat a good gauge for the danger-level. ;)
January 30th, 2013 at 10:44 am
Isn’t that the strangest part of the writing life, “discovering” the characters we create?
January 30th, 2013 at 11:43 am
It is certainly strange, though I don’t know if it is stranger than the way plots form themselves. It’s all a bit surreal, isn’t it? :)
January 30th, 2013 at 1:00 pm
I have no way of describing it yet. It’s kind of like watching my son play with his toys.
January 30th, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Alas, I cannot relate to that. It is a fascinating process, though, and I am never sure how much of a hand I actually have in it. Some decisions seem left to me, but I do not so much create my characters as they show up in my head… sneaky things.
January 30th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Ah, yes I suppose you haven’t seen my son playing… ;)
January 30th, 2013 at 3:34 pm
Bah, you know what I mean ;)
Though I could be creepy and pretends that I do. :P
January 30th, 2013 at 5:31 pm
I’m being cheeky, and not very helpful. I made my son (sort of), and he plays independently of me, shaping his own worlds. And yet I can see the threads of his thoughts to my life.
Does that make sense? Obviously I’m stretching here.
January 30th, 2013 at 6:01 pm
No, that actually makes a lot of sense to me. I can see the threads of things I have absorbed in my characters, inspiration and suchlike, but then they are their own as well, and do things I would never expect. :)
January 30th, 2013 at 11:10 am
siri, take a note!
January 30th, 2013 at 11:44 am
A good reason for me to get a smartphone. However, losing my life to the blackhole of games still outweighs it… I could get a tape-recorder, though.
January 30th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Kill you… make life more exciting. It’s a fine line. And who says writing is all sitting in front of the page.
January 30th, 2013 at 2:35 pm
Hehehe, true. If they do manage to kill me, though, they won’t have their story finished. That would serve them right!
And yes, one has to live to write. :)
January 30th, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Ach, well, you have a necromancer or so. I wonder if your tornadoes were made of the force 9 we had last night/this morning.
January 30th, 2013 at 3:47 pm
True, but I’d be quite “unhappy” if any of my characters tried to keep me writing post-mortem.
Force 9 Beaufort Scale? From what Wikipedia says, that is winds from 47 to 54 mph. Our news is telling us “Winds in excess of 100 mph,” but I think they have to be talking about the EF2 tornado, not the general wind, otherwise we’d be hurting a LOT. The damage mentioned from a force 9 sounds about the same or a little greater than what we faced, save for the tornado.
The only fatality last night was a man who was not in the path of the tornado, but was killed by a falling tree. I was sad to hear the news this morning.
January 30th, 2013 at 4:04 pm
You could haunt them with vengeances…
My memory’s faulty, then…c.75mph, anyway. Aye, the rest of the world goes into calamity mode at about 63mph for a normal wind (known as “quite windy” here), it is hard to remember sometimes. (the average windspeed is 30ish here. Storms generally only do damage when they top the 85 mark.)
Death is a capricious thing.
January 30th, 2013 at 4:28 pm
Well, yes, but they could be very nasty back… one of them certainly would be.
I expect things are built, and grown, to expect such wind. I do love wind. I was telling my dad last night that, while I don’t relish tornadoes, I can’t help but adore the rising of a good storm. There’s also something exhilarating in seeing an impossible orangey-greenish sky.
Looking at the news reports again, it seems that winds did reach 100 mph downtown, where there was no tornado. Hmm. I had better check my roof this weekend. I may have missed seeing a lot of damage by driving into work before dawn. It’s also probable that my part of town wasn’t hit so badly this time around. Elsewhere trees were snapped and roofs torn off. I have to wonder why we keep our powerlines above ground. It’s idiotic in an area like this.
They say there were seven tornadoes confirmed in middle TN. February is starting its tantrums early.
As are storms.
January 31st, 2013 at 3:29 pm
You’re fortunate to have remembered them all! In deference to safety, it’s been years since I’ve tried to jot down a story note while driving, and it’s cost me many a good idea (though probably saved my life a few times).
February 1st, 2013 at 8:49 am
An idea doesn’t do us much good if we injure or accidentally kill ourselves before we get to use it. ;)
February 2nd, 2013 at 3:29 pm
Good for you. With the fragility of my memory, I’d have to pull over at the first available parking lot and interrupt my drive or I’m certain I’d forget some of the elements of my epiphany.
February 2nd, 2013 at 10:49 pm
It was only about a ten-minute drive, but I am still astounded that I managed to remember four of them!
April 8th, 2013 at 5:07 pm
Why do all good ideas (or, at least, many) come while driving???
April 8th, 2013 at 8:32 pm
Good question… I don’t even do that much driving and it happens! I think it’s because the practical part of my brain is occupied with driving, leaving the other parts unsupervised, which is always dangerous.
April 8th, 2013 at 8:53 pm
“Unsupervised” is a good way to put it :)
April 8th, 2013 at 9:01 pm
It’s probably also why ideas come when I am half asleep. ;)
Sometimes, I think my subconscious may be much smarter than my conscious mind, or at least more clever.
April 9th, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Indubitably! As I understand it, our brains keep working while we sleep, so our subconsciouses (subconsciousnesses?) are able to work through problems our consciouses (consciousnesses?) can’t (or are too busy to work through). This means we often wake up with a problem resolved … not to mention traces of dreams still floating around weirdly.
April 9th, 2013 at 11:01 pm
Mm, I’ve heard that, too, and it makes sense (and now I am wondering what the correct plural is…). Not thinking about a some problems seems to be the best way to solve them, which is half frustrating and half magical.
April 10th, 2013 at 4:33 am
Exactly. I like how you think :)
April 10th, 2013 at 6:47 am
Likewise. :)
January 22nd, 2015 at 8:46 am
[…] do my best to answer it. Apart from being generally talkative, sometimes my characters seem a bit authorcidal. More thoughts on influence and inspiration can be found here. If you’re interested in […]