Writers Chair - Johan Raubel

80,000 Words in 3 Weeks: Johan Raubel on AI, Dictation, and Literary Restraint

Can technology actually make your writing more human? In this episode of The Writer's Chair, Lana McAra sits down with author Johan Raubel to discuss his character-driven novel, Hannah, and his unique approach to the "interior life" of fiction.

Johan shares how he broke free from the "exhausting" traditional advice of writing from beginning to end, instead discovering a liberating workflow that involves AI-powered dictation and cinematic thinking. If you’ve ever struggled with a slow first draft or found yourself over-explaining every detail to your reader, this conversation is a masterclass in trusting your muse—and your audience.

🎙️ In this episode, you’ll discover:

• The "Floodgate" of Dictation: How Johan used OpenAI’s Whisper to get 80,000 words down in just over three weeks.
• Voice vs. Hands: Why Johan believes the voice is the "creator" while the hands are the "editors."
• The Power of Restraint: Writing for a literary audience by favoring emotional truth over overt explanation.
• Cinematic Writing: How "camera positions" in your mind can help pace a slow-burn romance.
• Being Ruthless: The painful but necessary process of "killing your darlings"—even the scenes that make you cry.

📖 About Johan Raubel

Johan Raubel is the author of Hannah, a novel exploring intimacy, connection, and the risks of being seen. His writing focuses on quiet moments and the "reassembly" that follows grief. He is currently working on his next book, The Gentle Orbit.

✨ Connect with Johan:

• Website: [Insert Website Link Here]
• Book: Find Hannah on Amazon and Kindle.
• Mailing List: Join Johan’s list via his website to get the first chapter of Hannah for free!

This episode is sponsored by Vandela Publishing. Vandela Publishing is a collaborative, traditional publisher that acts as a strategic partner to build career authors. Visit them at VandellaPublishing.com.

#WritingCraft #AuthorsOfYouTube #LiteraryFiction #WritingWithAI #BookMarketing #TheWritersChair #JohanRaubel #PodcastForWriters

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In the Writer's Chair, candid conversations about the writing life with Lana McCara and Vandela Publishing.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Welcome to In the Writer's Chair, where we pull up a chair to talk about writing craft, the writing life, and what's possible for writers right now. I'm your host, Lana McCara, and today I am so delighted to welcome Juhan Rabbel to the podcast. Juhan is the author of Hannah, a character-driven novel exploring intimacy, connection, and emotional truth. His writing focuses on interior lives and quiet moments, favoring restraint and trust in the reader as opposed to overt explanation. Welcome, Johan.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

I am really interested in what you're doing because this is what we would call literary. Um, a literary novel where it's more internal. Um, but before we get into that, did you always want to be a writer?

SPEAKER_00 1:09

I think I did.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I think I did, yeah. So I wrote my first poem in English while I lived in Sweden when I was age 19. Uh for a girlfriend, of course. Um it was rather good. I I really liked it. Um and I don't know, it's just but then it got stuck in me. And it's also to do with what I was taught when I was at school. When people tell you, well, you start writing a book from the beginning and then you write it at the end, and then you start again from the beginning, and you edit it, and then you do that several times. Like, that sounds exhausting. I don't want to do that. And then finding the right tools, finding the right way of doing it, and realize you can start in the middle and it doesn't make any difference. It's perfectly fine. It was a huge relief for me.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Absolutely. You start wherever you're inspired to start, whatever's fun. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But you didn't write any more poetry, or or have you got some poems hidden out there?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

So yeah, I I wrote a little, but I could never see I I had just the right amount of heartache at that point in time at age 19 that I just really nailed it. But then, yeah. I didn't really have that much heartache after that, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

So yeah, yeah, that that reminds me. My my ex-husband wrote poetry, a lot of poetry. Uh, and then when we got married, he never wrote another word.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Never there's something about that. I feel that about my wife, you know, it's like, oh yeah, I don't want to write poetry about her because I I like living the life we have. I don't, you know, her poetry reads a little bit of a heartache, I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah, the heartache is what brings it out. Yeah, absolutely. So, what uh led you to go with the character-driven story rather than a plot, a plot-led story.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

I don't know. Yeah, it just the way this is the way the story came out. It was almost fully formed in my head before I started writing it, and um, it just tumbled out of me at an enormous speed. And um, dictation, be able to dictate is being the biggest shift in sort of technology that I use. Um, be able to have computers that actually understand what I'm saying, despite the slight accent, has been hugely helpful. And that I think is the thing that opened the floodgates a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

That's so interesting because I tried to do voice, voice-activated typing, you know. Uh it was called Dragon, naturally speaking, back in those days.

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Um, and I found out that my muse comes out of my hands. If I wasn't typing, I wasn't able to process as quickly. Did you start out using voice?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

So for me, it's the opposite. These are exceptional editors, but they're not creators. My voice is my creator. The unfiltered truth comes through my voice. So when I have a creative scene, I I need to dictate it. It has to be. And I can dictate and I can see the characters, I can follow them, I can hear what they're saying. And then that works. And and Whisper, which is part of the sort of AI now, um, is actually phenomenally good at understanding human speech. It is beyond anything. And you can just talk to it and it just understands everything. Even if you change language in the middle of it, it understands.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Wow. And which is that associated with any particular AI?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Or is it like No, you can download it. So on my computer, I have the Mac version of Whisper installed, and I dictate to it all the time. I hardly ever type on my computer. I say I can't be bothered. I just type, I just talk. And then when I come to editing, my fingers come out and then I edit and polish and edit and polish. Um sometimes I shove it into a local AI just to clean up my dictation, and then so I can get it structured, especially when you do a lot of repetition and stuff, but never for nuance and never for purpose kind of thing. It's it's still my my voice, but it's makes it a more efficient process using AI to help clean up the dictation, especially if you've dictated for like five or six minutes and you've just been on a flow and halfway through it you changed your mind. And you kind of, oh no, no, we're not gonna it's gonna do it like this. This is how we're gonna do it. Yes. And it it can just go, yeah, all right. Here's your clean dictation. Thanks very much. So that helps a lot.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Yeah. That is so fascinating to me. I I dictate on my phone, but I don't use it on my computer. So wow, really interesting. So AI has been able to speed things up for you, even though you're doing your own creativity. It's not an AI written book, it's your book.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

I mean so I I said the book was fully formed, and and I'm not saying this to brag, it's just to understand how fully formed it it was in my head. We got 80,000 rough words down in about three and a half weeks.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Because I dictated all of it.

unknown 6:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

I basically read the book out as it was in my head. Now, those 80,000 words weren't good 80,000 words, to be fair. So when we paired it back and cleaned it up, we had about 60,000 words that I could build on to make it what it was the eventual 115. But to me, and I I mentioned it because it was such a liberating process. The book had been stuck in my head for two years, over two years, and I've been polishing scenes, refining scenes, looking at motivations, and I would take it out. Like it was I I did a lot of writing, it was in a ski lift skiing. There's a lot of writing in my head then and talking about how the scene worked. And yeah, it was genuinely cathartic, yeah, just getting it out. So yeah, that was and that was most of the book.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Yeah, yeah. I can see how that would work because for me, the first draft is the hardest. It's always like really tough, you know, getting it all formulated in your head and and all of that. So you had a fully formed novel that just popped.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yep. And the second book I'm writing now, what I find most fascinating, what I enjoy the most, is the creative process. That thing when you don't have guardrails and you can just start creating the story arc and you can work on it and you can la sort of experiment with different things, oh, that works, that doesn't work. And I find that that's a very pleasurable experience to me. Um, and then I find that when you get a you need to tighten it to proper draft, that's that's a bit more tiresome. Because it feels it's that moment when you have a fragmented set of work, it's all fragmented, and you're looking to kind of make it cohere into a consistent story that works from start to end. And that's that's that's a tiresome, worrying and tiresome process where you because you you invested so much in creating it, and now you need to distill it into something that actually works in a book.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Right, right. Editing process, yeah, for sure. So this book, can you give us like the setup of what was your core problem that the character had to, you know, resolve? What what was that like?

SPEAKER_00 8:45

I took a lot from the dating world as it is today, and a lot from what I see about people behaving when they're around each other. And you take two people, you take a beautiful young woman who is admired and wanted by many, and you take her and you make it the man's achievement to be with her. And then so she becomes restrained, she becomes guarded, and then you take a man who's cared for someone for uh six years through cancer, and the emotional toll that took him, and how much he gave of himself when he had nothing left to give, and how he then makes a hard write saying, I'm not gonna do relationships, it costs too much. Just as sure that the pure risk of being in a relationship is too much. And then you put him on a platform in the morning, and as the first words of the book is Hannah hadn't meant to stare. But she does. And how they meet each other. And how because neither of them want a relationship, it becomes possible. And if any of them either of them move too quickly, the other of them would back out. But because neither of them move away, and they don't really move forward either, it just is. And that's the problem I wanted to explore. So that's what the book explores.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Wonderful. I'd love it. That is something that so many people go through. I've been through it, and you just figure I'm just not gonna play. I'm not gonna play anymore. Uh the game is too pain painful, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Very interesting. So you use the word restraint in your bio. What what do you mean by restraint?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

So in today's world, we're expected to lean in. Men are expected to lean in to take, to show assertiveness, to show masculinity. Women are expected to be assertive and and be uh sure of themselves. But I don't think that's people. And and restraint is waiting for someone, not taking, holding back, respecting both the time, the moment and the person. And seeing someone for who they are and not for who you need them to be. And that that the book does a lot on that. The chance for someone to be seen for who they are and not who people want them to be. That's a recurring theme in my writing, it would appear, but Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

So what about pacing?

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Pacing. I don't know. I mean pacing is important. You have to have a you have to have momentum. But you also need to slow the reader down sometimes and make sure that they pay attention. And you need to vary that and you need to make sure that you honor the the and trust the reader. So I I try to be more literary, not because I want to be literary, but because the style lends itself more to a more deliberate pacing. I'm not chasing action. I'm not Robert Ludlum or any of those action writers. And I'm not trying to be. Um my pacing is is the pacing that's needed at the moment. Um but you need you need to move the story forward and you don't need to linger on details. And that's something I I could never do. I've read books in the past where you you sit with three pages of description of the world and the room and the furniture and the people and the I no, that's not my style. So I tend to lean in, which is why the first word from that book is Hannah hadn't meant to stare, because I want to lean into the action straight away. And I do think I think quite cinematically when I write the book as well. It's I know the camera positions, I know where things are, I know how I see it when I when I imagine it. That kind of helps.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Yes, yes. I've got so many more questions for you.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Go on.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Awesome. Yes. I want to take about 30 seconds to just talk about our sponsor, Vendela Publishing. Vandela Publishing is a collaborative, traditional publisher, and they act as a strategic partner with their authors, and their goal is to build career authors. This is something unusual because a publisher usually doesn't get involved in the career of the author, but Vandela Publishing goes the extra mile. So check them out. Vandela Publishing is Via's and Victor, E-N-D-E-L-A Publishing.com. So, Johan, do you use first person, third person? What how do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

So I generally write them past as third person. That is my default. But uh in future books and the book I'm writing right now, so Hannah is set entirely in that in that frame. Um almost. I say almost. There's some bit that isn't. Um but generally I also experiment a little bit with other other narrative models because I think it's interesting and it changes it changes the emotion and the investment in the characters if you move to first person sometimes or if you stay in first person, but also makes it much more difficult when it comes to other people's emotions, because you can't make the people mind readers, so they don't really know what's going on around them. But that's sometimes helpful and sometimes not.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Yeah. They have to give themselves away somehow if you can't read their mind.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

And then you get these crutches where you're like, oh, so they he oh no, so now I need to engineer so they leave the room so I can get into the other person's head. But uh it generally works. And I I I enjoy the process, but Hannah is very much set in But also what I do in Hannah, which I I like, is where you have mirror scenes, so you have her his perspective, so it's third person limited on him, and then third person limited on her. Because I think it's and that's something I don't don't think that many do, because it's it helps immensely to see both perspectives of an event, especially at the start of the book when they're trying to understand what's going on. Uh, and also later in the book when they have different perspectives of something to just experience together. And I think that's important to show both sides. Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Yes, yes. I did one like that. It was a long time ago, a lot of years ago. It was so challenging to go from first person on one to first person on the other, which you're saying third person on both. I I get that. But I tried doing a dual timeline first person. It was really challenging. It was challenging. But at the same time, I mean, you really did get in there.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

You do. You do. And I think first person, I mean first person present tense. I I I'm I'm afraid of that. That's something that would scare me because that's very hard to do right.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Yes. Yes. So the current one you're working on, is that first person past tense?

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Uh it's a mix.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Oh, it's mixed.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

So one character holds first person narrative and the other characters hold third person limited.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Okay. Okay.

unknown 16:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

We'll see how that works out. Yeah. It worked out so far. It's it's almost finished, but uh um it's yeah, it's been interesting.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Yeah, I'm sure it has. Um keeping it all straight, too. You know, when you're in a scene and then you're thinking about what the other person, all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute, I'm I jumped.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

And and oh no, I wrote it in third person as normal, because that's my default. That's what happened a lot. So I have to okay, now I have to rewrite it to first person. Doesn't take too long normally, but it's still frustrating when you realize that you've defaulted into third person. But Hannah is is comfortably third person. And for that book, I think it really works. It is the right narrative model for it, and and it feels it makes both characters feel very even, which is just kind of the point of the story a little bit, that they're very part in very much partnership. So no one carries more interior weight than the other, and I think that's very important.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Yes, yes. Um, what about omission? What do you how do you decide what you're going to reveal and what you're gonna let the reader come to their own conclusion about?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

So I try to write as little as possible, to be fair. That's my that's my standard approach. Write only what's needed and let trust the reader to work the rest out. That's how I feel about the reader. Because I find it very difficult and I don't much like books that where you feel the yellow highlighter is everywhere on the book. Oh, here's an important emotion. Notice this one. Oh, notice this. This is it feels like I'm not getting into the book. Whereas, you know, some of my favorite authors they they don't let you. They're saying, if you're not in this, you're not going to get it. You have to invest in the book, you have to listen to what I'm saying about the characters and the story and the plot line. Uh I may not like what they do all the time, but I do really like their writing. And John LeCare is exactly one of those characters I don't really like the way he does with where he he leaves the emotional residue all there. But I can't resolve it. No. Okay. And I find that somewhat frustrating sometimes. But but I also love his style and and I love the way he writes. So I know other authors as well out there that that do similar things.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

It's so important to be a a reader, uh a reader of good books, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah. I'm I'm do mostly audiobooks, actually. Um because I found early when I was trying to write that if I read books, it colored my writing a lot. But listening to books, that's safe. It doesn't colour my writing. It broadens my understanding of the craft rather than lim rather than colours my writing. But if if I if I read the books, it really does impact me. In fact, I remember that first time I was at school when I wrote an essay of some kind or story. And I was like, oh, this is this is very similar to that book I wrote. I read what I wrote, and it was almost taken out, taken straight from it. Could have been a scene in those books. And I I didn't like that because it felt like I had plagiarized something instead of created something.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Yes, I understand. I wrote a book one time about a uh historical event, and I purposely did not read other historical novels about that same event. I didn't want to have that getting into my mind. I wanted it to be my own work. Yeah. So when I'm teaching writing and editing, I see new writers really struggling to explain every little detail. And I know you know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

So that comes down to trusting the reader to get it. What took you into that, you know, shifted you into that way of thinking from what typically new writers, you know, does it?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Because when I read it, I don't like it. And and the biggest shift was actually uh there's some software I can install that I have installed on my phone that allows a text file to be read out to me. So what I would do with Hannah especially was when I was kind of learning the craft, was to listen to the book spoken. And I would go, oh, this is bad. And I would highlight sections that I hope this is terrible. And it's terrible because you're kind of laboring a point or you're explaining some minor detail, and you're adding extra words to pad out a sentence that are just not needed, because they the the the whole meaning is completely clear with fewer words, but you still added more words. And that was an important kind of counterpoint to me, uh that listening to the words I'd read written and understanding how they sounded back to me. I think that helped a lot with exactly this that you mentioned about avoiding all the little details. Because it because I listened to so many audiobooks, it became I get a good reference point. Um and and it it kind of, yeah, it worked much better. But it was quite distracting and disturbing for me when I started and listened to this and I'm going, oh, is this bad? Oh no. And I doubted my craft. But then, you know, you sat there and you worked through it, you worked through it, and then it suddenly felt actually this is a lot better now. And I'm actually in the middle of editing the audiobook of Hannah, and you this is a very humbling experience.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

You're kind of going, that word. I should have edited that word out more often than I did. Why do I use that word so often?

SPEAKER_02 23:05

We get our we hit our pet words and we just keep on pounding on them.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Just keep on different books have different pet words. It's just in the new one, I'm writing enough is a too I enough. There's just too much of enough. And then in Hannah it was too much of other words. So, you know, it's yeah. But hearing them and seeing them and then taking them out was hard, and I didn't do a good enough job of it. So but I can't. It's it is the book is what it is. And that's also the thing for me was when I finished a book, I kind of empty my head of the book. So I don't really know I can't really recite Hannah. I know the broad outlines of the book. I can probably put things in roughly the right timeline, but I I I don't hold the book in my head anymore. And that was very satisfying being able to let go of it. Having held it in my head for over two years.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Yeah, yeah. So what's next? What your next book? Is it another romantic encounter?

SPEAKER_00 24:10

It's more literary. It follows tw uh two people through twenty years of their life.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Okay, okay. Are they uh related to each other or are they married?

SPEAKER_00 24:21

They meet at uh, you know, of one of those youthful uh holidays where you go and do silly things with you know you're young and and and adventurous and you do silly things with people, that's what that's where they meet. Not that they do any silly thing with each other, but that's where they meet, and that's where their relationship is established, and then we follow them through that and through bad decisions and good decisions through marriage and through death and all the things that happen to people in their life.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Oh wow. Do you have a title for it?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

The Gentle Orbit.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

The Gentle Orbit. I love that title, it's really awesome. When that's ready, come back and we'll talk again.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah, I'm fighting length on that one because it's sitting at 167,000 words and it's not quite finished yet.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

And Hannah was only 115, and I don't know how it got so big, but it it did. It got very and it's I don't know, it's but it's been really interesting for me to see how I've taken a very different direction and how I've done the a much more complicated arc and plot line and character of character development. Because following people through 20 20 years, they start off with young, and at the end of the book, they're not young. Um, you know, so and making them feel like they're not young anymore in their decisions and how they speak and how they talk. Especially people who who come back from grief. Um when I I call them reassembled rather than healed, because people who come back from genuine grief aren't really ever back, they're just reassembled slightly differently, but still functioning. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Oh yeah, I understand that. Yeah, especially losing a life partner.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah, definitely. But um looking forward to uh July-August when I'm gonna start Hannah Book Two. So that that I'm already itching to get going with that.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

Yes. So what about publishing? What did you decide to do for publishing?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

So I've I'm mostly self-published in a way, but I have gone with uh a main sort of uh pod print on demand partner. Um and I'm also setting up my own, I also set up my own little publishing studio. So I'm working with that, trying to get uh things organized around that because I I wanted to have my own setup. I didn't want to go and we didn't have good publishing partners available to me when I set this up. So and the hybrid publishing deals I was offered or asked to invest in, I should say, uh, they didn't appeal to me at all because I had no control and it was very much a package deal. And then, well, you spent the money, it's over now. And I'm not finished. And I didn't want that to happen. So I wanted to be able to plan my own destiny a little bit better.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Absolutely. I'm with you on that. I I worked with three different hybrid publishers, and the minute the book came out, darn, we're done. You know, have a nice life.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Um my wife is also very jealous of the imprint we've chosen, the little cat there on our tin roof. But it's important to have a memorable imprint.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

So Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Well, yeah, it's it's we'll see how it goes. I mean, but this book I and I'm grateful that I can be on your podcast here because getting myself known is is the biggest challenge as a new author. Getting people to see that you can do this, and you know, I and I have so many writing projects that I want to finish. So um and I I can do one book a year, so I'm doing one book a year.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah, that's good. That's a good rate, that's a good steady rate. To be a career author, you just have to keep putting books out. Just keep putting them out. It doesn't mean you have to do three or four a year, it just means you keep putting them out, and over time you'll you'll get accumulated.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Yeah. Timing-wise, I take it it takes me about nine months to write the book. Almost irrespective of length it would seem. But it's how long it takes, about nine months. So yeah. So this this next book this was out in November because it got slightly late because I had some logistics issues with the publishing. Um came out in November 2025. And this book. And in uh October, we're gonna release the next one.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

So okay.

unknown 29:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

But it's it's exciting. I I feel slightly giddy about the whole thing of writing, and I feel like I'm I'm I'm cheating off work and not going to work.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

So I get it. It it's um euphoric. It really is uh Yeah, very, very much so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Especially when you write review you when things come, you know, things come full circle. You you've set something up and then you write the conclusion, you look at it going, it worked. I really like it.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Yeah. And and when you see when you have a good cover and you're like, oh, the cover is awesome. Even though you didn't do the cover yourself, uh, because I don't do my own covers.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

No, no, I do my own covers. This this is this is covering me set by me.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

I did all the work in making the book happen.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Well, good for you. Yeah, multi-talented. I I just have no eye for graphics or design. I just rather leave that to the experts. Um, but yeah, holding that book in your hand. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like it.

unknown 30:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

The the thing that I find most amazing is when I pick the book up and start reading it, how I get stuck in it. I don't want to put it down. But it's my book. I'm like, but because I've downloaded it, I I don't hold it in my head. I just want to stand there and read it. Oh, this is rather good, actually. I like the joke.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

I got so attached to my characters. My first four books was a series, and I got so attached to them that when I finished the series and moved on to something else, I actually went through a grieving period. Like family member had died.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

I I seriously Oh, I I can relate to that.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

So in a future project that I've been sort of sketching on, because sometimes I have to take a break from the book I'm working on, and I do that by working on another book, because that's what we do. Um and I had to write my first my first death of a character that's fully witnessed. Oh, I cried.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Oh, yeah, me too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

I cried.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

So hard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

It's not that good, by the way, what I wrote. But it's good enough as a as a starting point for some refinement.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Because I laboured the point too much. Exactly what we discussed earlier. It's far too detailed, far too it's an expose in someone dying, and it shouldn't be. You should be restrained, you should be withheld, you shouldn't say what we need to say to give the character the dignity and and the reason that they uh that they need. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

I had um we have to be ruthless. We have to be ruthless and do what's best for the story, and it it really pains us. We suffer. Um, it's real. And one time I I do ghostwriting, uh, and I was ghostwriting a novel for someone who had been working on this book for many years, and eventually, you know, said, I just don't have what it takes, and they hired me to bring it to life. And we got to a certain point in the story, and I said to him, This particular character right here needs to die. That that is a turning point in the story, and we need that angst, we need that that tension to pull it forward. He was a he was a side character, but he was important, and he was really loved, loved and lovable. Um, and like and my client said, We can't kill him. We can't kill him. He wimped out on me. He whimped out on me, and the story suffered because of it. And at that point, I realized we really do have to be ruthless in what we do.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

And sitting there and taking things that you love. Yeah, because I have children in the book that I'm writing now, and some of the scenes I love with the children. And you kind of go, yeah, this this one is this one has the same emotional heartbeat, emotional subtext as the other scenes. So this has got to go. And you just delete it. It's okay, it's gone.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

But that comes back to where we started about craft, about learning and using the right tools. So I find working, I don't know what you what tool you use to write uh your books in, but I use Scribner. And it's a terrible tool for finishing a book. But in the crafting stage, I find it excellent for me because I can write bits and I can assemble them, I can move them around, and I don't have to follow the timeline is the is on the side, but this I don't have to worry about the actual individual sections of text. And I can put things in, I can take things out, and it's very easy and it doesn't feel so destructive. And I don't have to delete them, I can put them into a folder and say, well, these are things that didn't make it. And that to me is then come back to what I said earlier about how I learned to write and what I was taught when I was at school, that transformed, just be able to see it differently and write it differently and hold the story together differently. First of all, it does it never feels it never feels big because every every bit is, I don't know, between 400 and 4,000 words. Never more than that, really. If 4,000 words is even probably less than that. Most of them are around 1,500 to 2,500 words, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

So how do we get more? Your website or somewhere else?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yes, my website is great. Hannah is available on Amazon and you can probably order it from most bookstores as well, actually. Um but it's a mail on Amazon, it's it's available from my website. You can you can look in on it there. Uh the first chapter you can either get through the easiest is either or look join my mailing list on my website and you you get the first chapter for free. Or you can just download it on Kindle if you want to read it on Kindle. So it is available hopefully everywhere that you would need to look for it.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Okay, that sounds great. Well, Johan, thank you so much for us today. It's been amazing. Yeah. And thank you for being with us today. Thanks for pulling up a chair. We'll see you next time.