WHEN MULTIPLE MANUSCRIPTS COMPETE FOR ATTENTION

As I've been working away on Raymond and his story, a completely separate protagonist, with his own story---Bink---has thrust himself quite rudely into Raymond's and my little world.  This is certainly not the first time in my  life that characters and stories have disregarded what I have always thought of as The Rules Of Etiquette Concerning Authors And Their Creations.  In the past I would have spoken quite firmly to someone like Bink, bundled him back to wherever he came from, and told him to wait his turn.  Of course the muzzled protagonist would not always take kindly to such a rejection, and would often retreat into an obstinate silence that could be difficult to reverse.  A somewhat painful situation for me, the author (and for the protagonist, too).  But the alternative, allowing characters and stories to dictate working habits---that would be anarchy.  Obviously.  Except this time, when Bink burst through the door and announced his presence---well, maybe I'm older and wiser, or maybe I'm just plain tired of arguing---but I thought, Why not? 

Raymond was momentarily on the back burner.  I knew that my subconscious was unravelling the current knot for me, and would reveal the solution when it was ready.  Why not listen to Bink while I was waiting for Raymond?  Which is exactly what I've been doing for the past couple of weeks.  It's too soon to tell whether this is a completely successful experiment in my writing process.  But I have  seen that by sandwiching Raymond between Bink between Raymond between Bink, I'm certainly producing more rough draft pages for each than I would have if I had been working on just one.

The thing is...a third protagonist knocked on my door just yesterday.  Moses, his name is.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit it...but I let him in...