"I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me"
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There’s a sly bit of clerical showmanship in Greeley’s confession: he frames authorship not as strenuous craft but as surrender. “I write easily” sounds like bragging, then he immediately dodges the ego charge by shifting agency to the characters. It’s a neat rhetorical absolution. If the people on the page “take over,” the author isn’t claiming genius so much as reporting a kind of possession.
That’s where the subtext hums, especially given the collar. A clergyman describing his work as listening to voices fits a religious imagination in which inspiration arrives from outside the self. He doesn’t say God is dictating, but the structure is familiar: an instrument, not a master. For a Catholic priest-novelist who moved between parish life, sociology, and popular fiction, this also reads as a defense of productivity. Greeley wrote a lot; “they tell me what to say” converts volume into vocation, almost a pastoral duty to follow where the story leads.
The specificity of “a third of the way” matters. He’s not romanticizing pure trance from page one; he’s describing a handoff after the initial scaffolding. That’s a craft truth smuggled in as mystique: you set constraints, you establish psychology, and then the consequences of those choices start feeling inevitable. The line flatters readers, too. If characters are autonomous, they can surprise the author, which means they can surprise you - and that promise of lived-in interiority is exactly what popular narrative fiction sells.
That’s where the subtext hums, especially given the collar. A clergyman describing his work as listening to voices fits a religious imagination in which inspiration arrives from outside the self. He doesn’t say God is dictating, but the structure is familiar: an instrument, not a master. For a Catholic priest-novelist who moved between parish life, sociology, and popular fiction, this also reads as a defense of productivity. Greeley wrote a lot; “they tell me what to say” converts volume into vocation, almost a pastoral duty to follow where the story leads.
The specificity of “a third of the way” matters. He’s not romanticizing pure trance from page one; he’s describing a handoff after the initial scaffolding. That’s a craft truth smuggled in as mystique: you set constraints, you establish psychology, and then the consequences of those choices start feeling inevitable. The line flatters readers, too. If characters are autonomous, they can surprise the author, which means they can surprise you - and that promise of lived-in interiority is exactly what popular narrative fiction sells.
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| Topic | Writing |
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