Research

So yesterday I went to the library with my sister, and I picked up a few things to read. She took one look at my list and said, "You can tell you're a writer."

I laughed and said, "What do you mean?"

"Well," she said, "normal people don't check out books about cancer or anorexia."

She's very right, and that's one of the reasons I'm glad the library staff knows me so well. Your average nineteen-year-old does not pick up "Advanced Cancer," "Understanding Cancer, " "When the Focus Is on Care," and "Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa," in the middle of summer.

Why the heavy reading list, then? RESEARCH. It hit me that since my characters spend so much time at the hospital, it ought to have a name, and what's more, it ought to be a real place. In a ideal world, I would just hop in a plane and go to San Francisco, but luckily, we are living in the age of the internet. Still, googling "oncology San Francisco" isn't as helpful as I wish it were, so I have checked out books about cancer.

Also a book on anorexia, but that has nothing to do with my novel. Admittedly, neither do "Othello," "Enthusiasm," or "Great Expectations."

I've also ordered several books on the early history of the planet Earth--specifically, the years before the dinosuars, when there were no flowers or bees and the only animals that creeped were lizard, and even before that age, where the only life was in the sea.

I am not sure if they taught you this in history class, but we have evolved from sea creatures.

For my author research project, I have been looking up Jodi Picoult, and she writes that she researches extensively even before she begins writing. I have failed to do this, but I am not above a lot of editing. In the early stages of my novel, Hussein was originally from Saudi Arabia, until a Lebanese friend of mine told me frankly that it was impossible.


Speaking of, I should probably research Lebanon too.