Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Novelists Are People

Novelists are people too. Just different.

Like other people, we love to hang out with our friends. Why does it matter that most of them happen to be imaginary?

And we need sleep like anyone else—dreams provide some of our very best ideas.

We take time to get to work. Hey, our desk might be across the room, but you just don’t step into the eighteenth century or galaxy far, far away!

Deaths make us cry; we don’t like it when a character dies on us any more than our readers do.

We become irritated at interruptions. Unfortunately, we can’t tell the characters in our heads to shut up without being guilty of the same.

We have no control over this world . . . or over any one we create.

We have lots of things to learn, as our characters like to remind us at every possible turn.

Revenge might belong to the Lord, but it’s a temptation nonetheless. Yeah, those villains in our latest novel . . . well, let it suffice to say we still have some issues to work out.

We endure headaches, backaches, and stomachaches, requiring an occasional sick day. We just haven’t figured out how to send our characters that memo yet.

We crave acceptance and companionship. Even multiple dimensions fall flat if we don’t have anyone to share it with.

2 comments:

Shirley Ann said...

I really enjoyed reading your take on novelists. Witty.

-Shirley

Chawna Schroeder said...

Thanks! It was fun to write.