Learning by Writing

A few months ago I had to give up writing my book full time.  It was good news really because my wife is pregnant and I would rather have the money in the bank than the words on paper.  I’ve got a contract that I’m really enjoying and I’m actually getting to apply agile techniques to get the cash flowing quicker for our customer.  The customer is very happy with the new perspective.

I’m trying to work 4 days a week and take the 5th day to work on my book – although it’s never that easy!. 

So far I find this very productive because even though I’m not writing so often my brain ticks over in the background and I don’t suffer writers block as much as I did when I was full time.

Anyway … one of the things I’ve found while writing is that if I’m getting it wrong then my characters tell me.  If I’m missing something – say my argument isn’t clear enough or it’s wrong – then the characters say so, out loud in their dialog.  Tom, Steve and Craig are all very thoughtful, well meaning and intelligent characters so they’re polite about it … but they’re very politely blunt.  I’m sitting there typing away and suddenly one of the characters – usually Steve – says something like “Huh? I don’t understand what your talking about” or “Slow down there, I’m confused’. 

I’ve learned to listen to them because they seem to understand their subject better than I do.

When this happens I’ve found that the best thing to do is to let the characters figure it out themselves. 

This may sound strange.  But, it’s like I’m just sitting there transcribing their discussions.  They discover all sorts of things that make the story or the lessons clearer, they often figure out things that I wasn’t aware.  Their discussions are a bit crazy and all over the place at times, so I need to rewrite them so that they’re crisper,

I’ve learnt lots by listening to my characters as they learn how to Roll Rocks Downhill. 

I might even get them to guest star on my blog one day.