Research

What does "research" mean? To many, it simply means looking things up. To me as a scientist it means trying to understand what is going on, partly by reading to see what other people have discovered, but mostly by doing experiments to check out my ideas. I am now translating this process into writing my latest book, which is about applying scientific thinking to social questions. People have done this before under various guises, and boy am I getting excited in reading what they have discovered. it's taken me back to my student days, and I am applying a method that I worked out for myself and which served me very well.
Instead of taking notes, I write out questions. Later, I give myself a little exam on those questions, and then I go back to my original reading to see whether I have remembered and understood it properly. Anything I have missed or got wrong gets noted in red beside the original answer. That way, I can't kid myself that I have understood something when I really haven't.
Later, I will try out some little social experiments to check and challenge my ideas and those of others. Should be fun!

Aiming for Gold

Writing (at least, the way I do it) can be compared to archery, with the storyline as the trajectory of the arrow, ending hopefully in the centre of the golden bullseye that is the point and culmination of the book. The problem is that the arrow has to be aimed accurately at the beginning, or it will miss the target. Luckily a writer , unlike an archer, has the option to grab the arrow before it has gone too far and put it back in the bow for another shot.
That is exactly what I have been doing during the past week, writing and re-writing the start of the book so that the storyline is heading in exactly the right direction. Time and again I have set it off in the wrong direction, but after a week of trying I have finally succeeded in pointing the arrow where I want it to go.
So that's half a page written. Now all I have to do is to write the rest of the book.

Contract!

Some writers can just keep going with writing a book, regardless of whether they have a contract or not. Me, I regard the long anxious wait, and the consequential writers block, as all part of the process. It's not without its benefits. The long gap (reflected in the gap in this blog) had me questioning my direction, planning other books for the future, and generally filing and tidying up my study and my mind, not to mention my e-mails and computer files.

Finally, though, I have been offered a contract based on the synopsis and sample chapters that have been going the rounds of the publishers. If I had started writing, most of my effort would have been wasted, because my new editor effectively wants me to scrap the first three-quarters of my planned book and focus on the last bit, which she regards as having all the liveliness and interest.

She's right, and I never saw it for myself. That's why showing your work to others is so useful, and the more professional the "other", the better. Writers, like scientist, are only too apt to fall for their own bullshit, especially when working on their own.