Michelangelo once said, when asked how he knew what he wanted to carve into marble, that he wasn't the one who decided what to put in it--the statue was already there, inside it. The marble only told him what figure awaited inside the block, and it was his job simply to release it, not to create it.
Now, many of you authors out there might have experienced this feeling. For those of you who do not write, let me just tell you this: more often than not, an author is not a person who creates a story. An author is a person who gets a sudden, vivid picture of an already formed story and simply has to put it down so others can enjoy it. You might not like your characters, or what they do, or even the plot--but the story isn't yours, and you're not in control of it. You simply have the responsibility to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). It can be both an incredibly frustrating but also incredibly rewarding responsibility. Most of the stories that hit me square in the soul like that are ones I love, but it's not just those ones which I must be compelled to share, but also the ones I am not so fond of.
So, writers--have you ever had a story do that to you? Was it one you liked or one you didn't?