Yesterday I was just zipping along on my revision and I added a new scene that I’d thought of the other day on my walk. Sometimes when I add scenes, they go in directions I never expect. When I was done with the chapter I had to stop and pause. You see, I’d just moved a major event from the halfway mark of the book to the third chapter without even meaning to. At first I was kind of concerned because…well…now what’s the big event in the middle of the book? But then I realized that it really made much more sense for it to come earlier and I should just shut up and listen to my characters! They always know what’s going on if I let them lead.

The next two days will be busy…probably too busy to write because I have to sort out the changes in my mind before I go back to it and I can’t really do that without some long walks. I won’t have time for that until Thursday. On the plus side, it’s always better to let things like this germinate AND I am about to have approximately nine days of write, write, writing time (minus the weekend for Sunday Soup ). The husband has volunteered to help a friend for a week and I will be on my own all day, each day. While I’ll miss him (and all the funny things he says that I steal for my books) at lunchtime and breaktime and walking time and baseball time, I’m looking forward to completely uninterrupted chunks of writing time too.

Do your characters tell you what to do too?

P.S. The photo is of me and my husband and we took it ourselves with the timer. It was the cover of our wedding invitation. All together now…”Awwwww!”