Never tell a character in your head to get lost

A slightly different form of this essay was published in Medium.com

One morning nearly ten years ago, a voice showed up in my head as I was walking up the stairs to my 3rd floor writing room. They were offering the beginning line of a story. By the time I sat in front of my laptop, the voice made it clear that I needed to get to work immediately. “She” absolutely was not going to leave me alone.

No one told us we were going to have a summer-long visitor until the night before that visitor arrived.

Ivy Scattergood

A few months before that, I’d gone back and read a bunch of young adult coming-of-age stories. This was around the time I was becoming acutely aware of the fact that our youngest son was about to leave home for college. I suppose that because I’m a writer going back to my reading roots made sense. Maybe others return to old music, long walks, or pre-parent hobbies.

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