It's ALIVE!!!

(This is for a certain someone who tells me my posts have gotten too short)
The following passage was taken from The Editors Preface in the beginning of Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte:
"...the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent to 'harrow the vallies, or be bound with a band in the furrow'--when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'--when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--the nominal artist--your share in it has to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame."

I have the Editor has put it plainly, if that thick, old English jargon is plain. I read that passage and immediately recognized the description. I've been the victim of several uprisings of my fictional characters, and I can tell you, it aint pretty.
Once I had to give up on an entire book completely because a certain character took leave of my control and even of my own thoughts. It took me quite the struggle for rip It (the main character gone bad) from the thoughts in order to save myself from sinking down with it. (This is the answer to some of you who wanted to know why i was discontinuing my full-blown novel).
My sister and I were once discussing book characters. (It was mainly after J.K. Rowling came out with the proclamation that Albus Dumbledore was gay.) We came up with this adage, and I think it applies to all books and their composers:
"Authors don't make the characters: readers do."
This is proven in the instances when book club members argue over a characters personality, motives, or character flaws, etc., like when A friend of mine stated she hated the character Peter Pan because he was stuck up, mean, rude, hurtful, and all those lovely adjectives; while i thought he was hilarious, adorable, carefree, and innocent, if not heartless, and that he embodied all that was the imaginative world of children.
Characters are how you see them: An author may be able to place the characters in situations that will bring out their character traits and have plots that will reveal facts about their personalities, but really it depends how a reader takes their own view of the characters' trials, motives, actions, thoughts, and all that literary drivel.

As a writer, the characters you create become something all their own. You find yourself bending your writing around a character's personality, not the other way around. In some ways, this creates great characters with depth that are believable and allow a reader to really relate. But many a time I've had to stop a character before it got it grew a mind of it's own.

In short, "you know you write too much when you love your characters in that way."