I Suck

Well. I've just had my first taste of what it feels like when the readers don't agree with what the characters have chosen to do. No, let me amend that. I'm pretty sure I have readers who don't even agree the characters would make these choices.

Tears, recriminations and self-righteous fury aside -- and there's a lot of that, let me assure you -- I'm trying to decide if this is, in fact, a positive thing. None of us agree with the people in our lives all the time, and quite often we believe they're behaving like idiots and don't know their holes from rumps in the ground. Is it a good thing that my readers are involved enough to think the same of the characters or me? I'm thinking maybe of the characters, but never me -- or is it that I am the same thing as a character to my readers, since I create and allegedly control the characters?

Hint: I don't control them. I'm just the reporter here.

The hard part is, I am really proud of those chapters now being questioned. I worked hard on them, and I know this is how these two people would react to the situation they find themselves in. I know it, and given that the story resides in my head, I think I really do get to claim expertise here. So it hurts tremendously that my readers don't agree. I'm getting questions and concerns and sneers even. And yet I get to do this with other people's work. And sometimes, my questions are good things that make me see the characters as whole people and not just extensions of my own self. Isn't that good?

I have no insight right now. I wish I could say I did -- that's sort of the point here -- but really, I don't have a lick of insight. I'm just reporting.

And reassessing where I post this thing again.