Story Sentience?

Aug 24, 2010 Daily Writing

I woke up early this morning and was unable to get back to sleep despite trying for at least a half-hour. Finally giving up, I decided to get out of bed and get something productive done. So I turned to my novel in progress–which has been coming along pretty cleanly so far.

But today nothing seemed to want to come.

Then I struck on a sentence that did not have anything to do with this story I’ve been working on. Not having anything else to do, I opened a new file and wrote down the sentence. Then came another sentence, and another and … well, you get the idea.

So now I’m a thousand words into a story that I have no idea where it came from or where it’s going. Really strange feeling. Is this what woke me up? Did this story demand that I refrain from going to sleep again? Did it know that if I lost consciousness again it would be gone for good? Was it fighting for its life there in the early hours of Tuesday morning?

Am I just over-analyzing the snot out of this?

Maybe the answer to all of these questions is the same.