Writers...who knew?

So, I am driving Anna home from soccer one evening along with a guy  from her team.  Little did we moms know when we set this carpool up strictly for our convenience that both of our kids were writers.

It's been interesting listening to the conversations back and forth.  In fact, on our very first ride home this kid was telling me about a Catholic trilogy he is writing.  Seriously.  The reason this is so shocking is because my Anna is nearly done with the massive editing faze of her Catholic trilogy (she has many editors).  Next faze?  Trying to publish!

But the best conversation by far was this...they were talking about how the story just progresses as they write.  They don't always know where they are going but the characters lead them there.  Then Anna says something about how the characters in her story fell in love....and that made her so mad because she hates it when characters fall in love in stories and it messes up the whole plot line.  And...this other kid totally agrees.  Seriously.  In fact, he just scrapped a story he had been working hard on because the characters fell in love and that was NOT in the plan.

You think I am making this up?  Seriously...this is what happened!  At that point I looked over and said something apparently very stupid, "um, guys, if you are writing the stories how can it just happen?  They aren't real.  YOU are writing it.  Change it!"  They both looked at me in shock.  "But it just happened.  The characters are so real it just happened.  We can't change that!"

OK - I guess I am seriously NOT an author.  I'll stick to algebra.