Research for Your Writing

I'm in the midst of heavy research for my novel.

I had my ideas in place and started writing it. Now I've taken some time off from writing only to study quantum mechanics. While I really like physics, I'd much rather be writing.

You see, my heroes are either physicist or scientists in some way, and I have to study their environment and what they know in order to understand them better. So while I'll never become a physicist myself, I want to be able to "talk" to my heroes eye to eye.

Being a bit anal, my research has expanded and I'm trying to understand more and more physics. It is fun and interesting after all and the brain exercise is stimulating. I keep having to remember though what my main goal is -- get a basic understanding, if that's even possible, of quantum mechanics and the scientific process.

Talking to a few authors, I know that each has their own writing process. Some start with the research, some do it in the middle, like I do, and some, who don't need too much research, simply fill up the missing stuff at the end (like street names and museums in Rome). What none does is to interrupt the writing process itself. When an author writes, they should just write. Not correct spelling mistakes, not look for the perfect word in the Thesaurus and not check facts.

Okay, back to work... back to quantum mechanics...

Categories: writing, research, process