I have this great story I’ve been working on for a long time now. I’ve got the plot and the conflict figured out. The problem is, my characters keep changing on me. For instance, I had this great career all figured out for my heroine — it’s such a cool career I’m not going to tell you what it was because I may want to use it later on. She’s changed her mind, however. She wants to be a business owner, evidently. I hope this solves more problems than it creates.

I’ve been struggling with the story and the characters for some time now. I know it’s a good story, probably as good or better than the one book I’ve had accepted for publication. I’ve gotten almost 40,000 words into this thing now and I’ve got to go back and rework it to fit my heroine’s new career. The task is daunting.

Still, I figure it’s a good sign that I had to listen to her. It means she’s really coming to life for me and that’s when I do my best writing — when my characters are as real to me as my next-door neighbors. That’s when they start telling the story and I’m just the scribe writing it all down.