Characters on Strike

Hey, what's going on here!?

I had just developed a character, a small woman with large hands who sings loudly in the shower every morning.  She was just about to talk to the neighbor walking down the sidewalk when she took a look at me and ran off my keyboard and scuttled away.  Lost her.

Another character emerged who had just had a tooth pulled at the dentist and was on her way to the drug store for her medicine, but she locked her keys in her car at the grocery store first and started crying uncontrollably.  She's sitting on the top of the computer screen and still won't stop crying.  I'm afraid her tears will short out the computer.  I need a towel.

The dentist, an old-fashioned man with a strong sense of duty to his patients and a wife who sleepwalks to the fridge every night to binge on Snackwell cookies and chocolate milk, has closed his door for the day at his practice, said good-bye to his assistant and now refuses to talk.  He's actually skulking over in a corner but won't say why.

The clock is ticking, the coffee is all gone, I am tired and no one is cooperating.

This is like having a teenager in the house who refuses to help with the dishes and won't clean up their room.  I'm beginning to believe my characters are on strike for higher pay, members of a fiction characters union.  I've told them I will have to go ahead and invent some other times, places and people, but they just wave contracts at me insolently.  They are sittin' tight, and I am gettin' nowhere.

Is it possible to negotiate?  Find common ground?  Or do I have to just order them back on the page?  It feels like they have the edge on me for the moment.

The old saw says, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."  Maybe these people are hungry and need feeding.  I'll have to read back through my draft and see about providing food, a little snack, a cookie.  Could be they need a drink, of course.  That is a device that loosens tongues, noir and otherwise.

The dentist perked up there when I thought about giving him a drink.  His sleepwalking wife must be taking quite a toll on him.  The sobbing woman sitting up there on the monitor, wetting my keyboard with her tears, looks tired and in need of some soothing broth or soup.  But, the lady who sings loudly in the shower is just gone.  I don't think I'll be seeing her again.

Two out of three seem open to labor negotiations and are looking hopeful.  I wish I'd known about this Union thing before I started writing or I'd have gone down to the corner, hired a day laborer from Mexico or El Salvador and learned some Spanish.