It’s a monster in the making, this story of mine,…

“Radish! Darling, why ever are you doing this to yourself?!” I ask myself yet again [a sure sign of lunacy, I'm told]. But I don’t really know how to answer that question. So I shrug and grin noncommitally.

This little universe of my creation — for my story — refuses to stop growing. It isn’t so little any more. Neither is the story arc. This story arc wants to span oceans, now.

As usual, my characters are running rough-shod all over me.

[yes, I know, I'm whining]

How pathetic. I’m bullied by people that you can’t see — yet.

In order to contain the storyline/plot thingy, I’m forced to deploy outlines all over the frakkin’ place. To keep track of this fevered figment, I’m now drawing out a timeline [ah-hhh, yes, akin to those in history textbooks], in order to keep up with all the overlapping occurrences and actions.

Family trees. Yikes. Fictitious geographies and climates. Double yikes. Fantastical maps and weird physical laws. Treble those yikes. Names. ZOMG. Names, given and family, place and, and, and,… I’ve got to name everything and everybody that’s pertinent to the story. [And the bloody pharmaceutical companies are snapping up all the really cool fantasy names!]

Cosmology, quantum physics, poli sci, superstitions, gender issues,…

Yikes, yikes, yikes.

Crap, why am I doing this?

“Because, you nit,” one elderly character indignantly reminds me, “the story wants OUT. It wants to be told!”

[headdesk]

I feel used. But I can’t abandon it, neither the story, nor the characters,…

… is this Stockholm Syndrome?