A word for you #fiction writers about research. One trouble can be that the more you learn, the less confident you feel about getting enough of it right. Well, forget about that – you can keep researching throughout your work on the book and ask experts to check your drafts when the time is right.

Another is that you can find yourself so thrilled by looking into another era that you forget about the novel or story it’s all for. You forget to write your book.

My work in progress is a novel (again, at last, after so many years, I can’t tell you how excited I am). It’s set in the 1920s and I’m having a marvellous time dabbling, paddling, then heaving myself into deep water for a truly exhilarating swim in those waters. So much of what went on then matches us now, and so much is different. You probably know how it feels when I say that the material keeps multiplying, like weeds on the verge of getting out of control.

So yesterday I sorted it out, made lists for the future, gathered in new files.

The biggest pile is from my evenings and afternoons of quiet writing: scribbles in long hand in lovely cafes. That took me by surprise. Those two-hours patches of leaving the research miles away and allowing characters to stride up to me and talk, to tell me about the crucial times of their lives, confide about their best and worst, those have been most useful of all. My characters deepen by the day, become tougher, kinder and (to me anyway) more loveable.

My point is this: research can often take over, yes. Regular sessions of ‘quiet writing’, preferably with friends, rather than alone at home, can open that portal and allow your characters to bring you their strongest stories in their voices. The balance is wonderful, between your novel’s world and allowing the characters to circle and land. Long live those marvellous coffee shops.

Happy writing!

Rosie Johnston is a human author – no AI allowed