Well, folks, it was a good weekend for football. The weather was unseasonably crisp (more like October), which made it perfect for the college game I attended Saturday night. Yesterday was a good football day too. I’m wearing black and gold today, and it’s not because of Hufflepuff Quidditch, if you know what I mean.
That has nothing to do with my topic today, but a good Monday football conversation never goes amiss.
Here’s my quick post: I need your help. If you 1) have done any kind of creative writing (even if you have no intention of publishing) and 2) have conducted any research for the benefit of your writing, I want to hear your research stories. Have you ransacked the personal archives of the obscure historical figure you’re basing a novel on? Have you slept on the ground with no sleeping bag to know how the characters in your quest fantasy must feel? Have you asked your mom for some unusual names of townships north of Pittsburgh? (I did that last week.) Have you Googled a lot of stuff? All of that counts as research. I’m developing a course on creative writing research, and I want to find out how other people do it. So pause and expand your definition of research, and then comment below to share your stories. Thank you in advance!
the Dr. Tess blog 
Hmm. I used thesaurus.com a ton for our book. We also looked up the anatomy of slugs and strange verbs (which includes bescumber). We did some research online through google, but we didn’t camp or go outside or anything. Most of our research was exploring the inner reaches of our imagination.
Thank you for sharing! I definitely don’t want to discount the value of imagination. I just am not sure if there’s such a thing as “pure imagination”; I think imagination has to have a foundation. And slug anatomy is a great foundation. 🙂
True.
True.