Dream Twist

It's one thing when your main character stops listening to you. Every author experiences that moment when their creation transforms from a marionette to a real boy, and now you are stuck feeding him, teaching him how to wipe himself, and putting money aside for college. But no one ever told me the upstart would invade my dreams and visit other characters while I sleep. Tell me that has happened to you, and I will stop taking NyQuil PM and just try to enjoy it.

I will admit I was grateful the first time he came up with a plot or scene twist. It was brilliant. Why should I do all the work, right? Of course, killing off one of my key secondaries before I had even gotten to know him well enough to call a "darling" did mess me up a bit. But I bowed to his creativity and welcomed him as an advisor. (I wasn't ready to assign him co-author credit.)  

Then this scene idea pops into my head. What if... All great ideas begin with that. What if he goes to visit his dead lover's twin sister? As my head hit the pillow, after my second trip to the bathroom that night, I told myself I should make a mental note, or better, a written note of my idea before I drift off.

By the time my bladder alarm went off again, about two hours later, he had done it. He had visited the ex-sister-in-law and they had an entire conversation without me.

What?

Of course I was angry. He doesn’t write things down. If he’s going to go off on his own and build a scene, the least he could do is record it for me. If I like it, I’ll think about giving him credit. Maybe.  

Come on, Man. What are you doing to me?

This writing stuff is hard at times, but it is also quite fun when you get on a roll and keep going like I am doing now.  

So, morning comes and over coffee, we talk about this, he and I. I tell him he has to help me the way he took over when he killed Motorcycle Mike. I liked Mike. I had a whole backstory ready for him, and wham, he’s gone. Yes, it still hurts, so help me here, I tell him.

He sips his coffee and smiles.

I finish my coffee and start a new chapter. We agree on one thing. He’s going to visit the sister-in-law. Easy-peasy?

No. On the train, these guys get on and give him a hard time. Does he sit there and ignore them? Of course not. I even send the conductor to break up whatever might happen, but, no. He has to engage.  

What should be a simple train ride followed by a subway transfer to Greenwich Village winds up with him getting off the train before Grand Central, the terminus.

But, I’m getting smarter. I make him get back on the train in the next car, leaving the conductor to deal with the mess. He’s back on track, literally.

This is harder than it should be. I complain, but no one seems to care.  

Finally, we get to the apartment building where she lives. I look at him. Well? What happened in the dream?

It was your dream, he tells me. He’s gambling with me. He knows how many words I have so far. We’re not even halfway there.  

I don’t want another cup of coffee, but I leave to make myself one, just to let him stew for a while or do whatever characters do when you leave them alone and threaten not to come back. I cut a small personal crumb cake into what I think are six equally sized pieces and grab one while waiting for the coffee. It is then that I notice they aren’t equally sized. This is why I don’t remember my dreams.

Anyway, the coffee is hot and foamy and it does a good job washing down the coffee crumb cake, so I am back, ready to get to work.

When I meet up with him, he is chatting with the doorman who he knows from when he used to live here. It would be nice if he shared these tidbits with me before bringing them up in conversations.

Now, in my version of what happens next, I had decided to make this entire trip a waste of time, when it comes to the plot, but he had a different plan, once again.

I grab another piece of crumb cake. It is really good, especially with the coffee which is very bold. So, the sugar from the cake, with the half-and-half in the coffee make the entire experience almost worth the effort. Almost.

When I get back to the scene, already in progress, she is telling him that her mom, who blames him for what happened to her son, his lover, the brother of the ex-sister-in-law twin, is dying.  

I pull him aside and we go out into the hall to talk. If you had filled me in on any of this, I could have prepared the reader, and myself, for this so that it has more of an emotional impact, which it doesn’t and it is all his fault.

That felt better.

He gives me the finger and goes back inside.

I can’t leave him on his own too long, because God knows what he’s going to do next and I’m starting to pull my hair out. The only thing that is keeping me from looking like my grandfather is that I have more hair than he did at my age, so let me at least keep that.

At the end of the day, I am exhausted. I know I need to rest. A good seven or more hours of uninterrupted sleep each night would be a gift and it might help me have the strength to keep my characters in check. But I am torn. Every book I read tells me I should encourage such behavior, and I was all for it when it happened during the day, while we were working together to move this story along, but at night? In my dreams? That’s a twist I can do without.