The Element of Surprise

I want my stories to push past whatever parameters I set up for them.  I want the characters to take me beyond wherever I thought I was going, and I want the stories to ask questions I can't answer.  A story should shape itself, in a sense.  For that to happen, I have to shut off my conscious mind while I'm writing--or at least, lock it up in a closet somewhere in the back of my brain.

I think I was in that zone of semi-consciousness yesterday, when I rewrote (almost from scratch) one of my stories.  Whether the story is any good is a different question.  But often those are the stories I'm drawn to read and re-read after they're done, because they tend to have multiple layers, and continue to surprise me each time I read them.