Writer dies of head explosion

So I had something happen today that's never happened before: dueling book characters are wrestling for brain space in my head.

How did this happen?

When I am working on a book, the characters become part of my daily life, and I am going over lines of dialogue or situations  constantly in my head.  I don't even notice it after awhile, because I am so used to it, and I would say the only people who are affected by it are my kids.  For all of a sudden I will realize that they have been talking to me and I am so deep into my head I don't notice.  Until they yell at me.

And accuse me of not listening.  Which is totally true, but still.  I am busy.  The thing about your head being busy is that you look like a dork otherwise -- just sitting there staring off into space.

Anyway.  For weeks now these particular characters have taken up full-time residence in planet brain, and things have been going along quite well.  But I "organized" my computer, offloaded a slew of pictures and tidied up my writing files, and well, now I can't find a damn thing.  It's a little irritating, but normally whatever I am working on takes up residence on the desktop.  But for some unbeknownst reason I hit the "organize desktop" button, and now I have no idea where anything is.  Oh. And because I took off all my pictures, the screen saver picture was in that, and so I had to change it to something that still happened to be left on.  It's been a bit of a fiasco.

The current screen saver is an ocean picture, so I can't really read any of the files sitting on the desktop.  Yes, I should change it, but who cares, whatever ... so today I had one of those brain freeze things and couldn't remember the name of the book I am working on.

That might sound odd, but I have working titles, permanent titles, and I have a few books that I am working on that don't even have titles.  But I only always work on ONE book at a time, and like I said, I can usually find it.

I was forced to go to the writing folder and scan through it for something to jog my memory.  By then I had of course remembered the file name, but I was amazed at how many other folders were in the writing folder.  Hmmmm.  So I started to look at them.  All little morsels and tidbits of story ideas.  Then I came across one called Gates and Gallagher.

Interesting name, I thought.  Like it.  Opened it.  LOVED IT!  Wanted more.  Let me just say this, there is nothing worse than getting into a book and then coming to the end and to the realization that the ONLY way you can ever read the rest is to write it.

Such a drag.  And probably not a common problem, but for me, it actually is.  

Anyway, the characters grabbed me and I suddenly felt a little overwhelmed.  Because the other characters were already in my head, and they weren't moving aside.

I couldn't work, so I put together a shopping list and headed south.  And it was so crowded in the car.  First off Margie wanted to bat it out with Walter, but then all of a sudden Jenny popped into my head and I started to visualize her, and then Walter yelled that he wanted more of his journal entries written -- that it was the best way to flesh out his character and prove that he was far deeper than I was portraying him ... then Gary Livingston joined the party and said that like Walter, he was misunderstood in the story.  The problem was, Gary and Walter are NOT in the same story.

What the hell!

I actually feel tired today.  And with a bit of a headache.  I never feel or have either, ever.  These characters are getting mighty damn pushy and I blame my bout of organization on the whole thing.  The whole mess!  The whole riot in my head that is wreaking havoc upon all of Lisakind.

You can't make this stuff up either.  (Even if you are a writer!)