Walking out the novel

Today, I was out walking my dogs on the dog beach. My son had come along and had found a piece of pipe and was busy constructing a sandwall with the pipe embedded to stop flooding of the imaginary city he was going to build. He was in fantasy land and so was I. While he did that, I walked along the beach for a while, turning over my characters in my mind. I became one character, and had an imaginary conversation with another, which resulted in me going home and belting out a scene, though it wasn't for the novel I'm currently writing and probably won't make it into the final cut because it's too inconsequential. I'm rather loving the idea of one day having my website with links to the chapters that have been culled, rather like the deleted scenes on a DVD. I love the deleted scenes.

I also love walking along and being with my characters, being inside their heads, being them. Doesn't mean I pick up a sword and slash away -- rather I'm thinking about their personal lives, the stuff of subplots, the romance elements (yes, I do have a romantic thread, though it isn't so apparent in the first book). All of this helps me enrich the characters -- helps me believe in them as people, living in my created world.

So, it was interesting to read my friend's blog (Forge and Brew) and find she was blogging about the exact same thing, though in a different way. And then to read a comment that Snail had posted about what she's thinking about during staff meetings. And also that when our past student came to talk to my students about her novel, she talked about holding conversations with people when you're really thinking about your characters. Quite funny really, if you then consider a conversation between two writers. Who knows what they're thinking? (Unless they're talking writing, of course -- in which case they're fully focused.)