Jim Wood: What I know about writing

The group assembled on the Four Seasons terrace.

Gracie Honeywalker spoke first. “Mercy, ain’t this a long way from that Kentucky farm.”

“Oh, poo!” Granny Limerick said. “There’s no difference between a farm and a … what do you call this, Jim?”

“This is a condominium building, Annie Kate. I’ve gathered you here to get your feedback on this Daily Rite session.”

Brian Larney adjusted his bow tie and oinked a pig noise. “Didn’t you do that in September?”
“That was the previous session. That time around, I started writing about myself but did such a terrible job, I returned to the world of fiction and all of you.”

“What makes you think we aren’t real?” Monsignor Collin Doherty asked.

“I hate to break this to you, ladies and gentlemen,” Jim said, after a long pause in which he considered the characters – some gentle, some monsters – he’d created. “But you are all figments of my imagination. Even this scene is a figment of my imagination.”

“If I’m not real,” Norman said, “that means this muscular body you’ve given me is purely in your imagination. Everyone, try pinching yourselves. If you’re real, you’ll feel it.”

They all started pinching themselves – but felt nothing.

“Oh, my God!” Victorial Balmoral intoned, “I am fictional. Cornelius, can you feel anything?”

“No!”

“It’s outraged I am, all this time getting upset over Agnes and Norman when it didn’t really happen at all,” Siobhan Limerick said. “Does this mean I didn’t give birth to those four babies who died?”

“None of this really happened … to you. But I took the writer’s license to mix up all sorts of real things that happened to other people, and make them happen to you. Sorry if I gave you too much conflict and tension. But I’m the writer. I get to decide.”

Agnes smiled her devious smile. "Not really, Jim. You created us in a certain way. Your story will only work if you have us doing things in character."