Nahno McLein

Writers face many problems. We're such a poor folk - never happy, always alone, miserable to the bone.

And the worst of all, these prejudices are not even true.

One thing is true, though. We're working hard on our stories, push ourselves and fight against gratuitous emotional outbreaks when things don't go the way we want them to. Characters can be even meaner than the prejudiced folk, making us change whole story lines or central themes. And still we're like mothers, loving our children no matter what.

The hardest of all is probably research. An evil necessity that creeps up on you at night when you're supposed to be tanking new energy for the next round of writing marathons where thousands of words have to be spilled onto the page. Yes, research gets us all.

How much research do you do for your stories?

Research starts by looking at how much time the main character needs to walk down a street and how much conversation can fit into that temporal range. Sometimes you're absolutely busy with something else, you have no time whatsoever to think about your story, but your mind forces you to switch your concentration and do mental research. For example at the supermarket cashiers.

Then there is what we normally perceive of as research - looking into books, talking to scientists and asking skilled friends. For my novel project, I'm in a bit of a mess because of the amount of research that I feel is needed to make it as good as possible. There's the scientific bit about parallel worlds, not an easy subject. Then the meteorological details for the tornadoes (partly even as close as characters in the other world) and not to forget smaller but nonetheless important information about characters.

I don't know why my character has to be an architecture student and not something else I'm more familiar with, but that's okay. Felix wants to study this, so I let him. Like children, I told you. So now I just have to figure out how to become a skilled architect, physicist, meteorologist and sci-fi writer in about three months which is my personal deadline for having written the whole thing. (Next to third year Uni stress.)

Wish me luck and I hope you writer's life is easier.

PS: I'm not complaining here. I love it. I just wish I could stop time.