When your characters walk away from you

I’ve been doing some blog maintenance in preparation for some website updates–winnowing down the archives, categorizing the uncategorical, cringing at old teasers. And in doing so, I stumbled across the following entry, from October of 2009:

Manuscript Update re: ENCOUNTER AT RHEA’S POINT

[. . . ]

Through the increased production, the characters started to run away with the plot a bit: my protagonist got all nervous about her first kiss, and somehow managed to drag out the action leading up to i...