I'm currently editing the audio bits of an upcoming interview with Esther Derby, who I came to contact with through Johanna Rothman. The interview subject is a different topic than the one in this post though.

After the interview we chatted a little bit more (via Skye) and Esther mentioned how she and Johanna are two very different personality types. Johanna is more of an extrovert, likes to just try out things and see what happens in a conversation, while Esther is more of an introvert - she usually gives herself a few seconds (or minutes) before answering questions and such (which made for quite an interesting edit hunting for those long silences :) )

 

Funnily enough, Johanna and Esther recently wrote a book together, which I highly recommend called Behind Closed Doors : Secrets of Great Management (Pragmatic Programmers) . Johanna wrote about it and so did Esther a couple of times.

What came up in my conversation with Esther though, was interesting. Esther mentioned that when they are writing, she herself writes more easily (she practices creative writing where you just write out something for a given amount of time which is a really creative way of expressing yourself and learning to communicate with with paper) and openly, and Johanna on the other hand, usually tries to build these "blocks" of places to put words in  0 chapter names, paragraphs, sections etc..

It occurred to me that in writing, both Johanna and Esther have essentially replaced their roles in their introvert vs. extrovert and behave the opposite of the way they interact by speaking. Esther had not thought about that until we discussed it and found it interesting. It is.

Could that observation hold for most people? For me it feels wrong - I wrote openly and I speak openly (well, I do invest some time before I talk but only on occasions. and you know my blog as a place where I sometimes just spit things out and then regret them. Still, I like it.)