I have a guilty pleasure.  It involves secondary characters that crop up when I am putting pen to paper.  I like them, oftentimes more than the main character, for the main character has quite a bit of heavy lifting to be done.  He or she has to carry the weight of the narrative, pulling the reader along through the pages.  From the perspective of the writer, the mechanics of the main character can get a bit ponderous.  What might take the reader minutes to read can take hours and hours of writing, and things get a bit dull, as the main character moves along.  But those secondary characters are somehow fresher and more alive, because often times there is very little rational about them. They crop up directly from the subconscious and enter onto the page to just perhaps solve a transitory problem within the narrative.  There’s that pure practicality about them that I like, and then they just seem to organically grow. It is a way for the subconscious to express itself.  They can charm you, these characters.  Artists in other fields must find the same kind of joy in these spontaneous appearances upon either the canvas or the clay – elements that, at first, may have a workman-like quality to the art, but then bring upon themselves a life of their own.  And this seems to be where the true artistry exists – in those moments when the subconscious crops up and seems to direct the whole affair. It gives you confidence, these appearances, for it seems to say that you are on the right path, headed in the right direction.  Something other than your rational mind is prodding you along – helping out with the creative endeavor.  This is where little flutters of joy appear along the continuum of the story.  They take you from here to there, and start to surprise you, and delight you.  It feels as if you, as the writer, are just as much connected to the mystery of the art as the reader will be.

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