I am the teacher and the student.

Recently I taught a class about the research process. I thought it might be fun to share some of the things I covered.

One of my favorite things about writing books that involve research is being both the teacher and the student. I pick my own subject. I decide what I want to learn.
I determine how long and how deep and how wide I explore. Really, can it get any better? While I usually don’t know a lot of specifics about the eventual book that unfolds, I trust that the deeper I dig, the more questions I ask, the closer I’ll get to the eventual story.


If you’ve read here any length of time you know I use a notebook for every story I write. They are part scrapbook, part research organizer, part writing practice, and part pep talk. When the book is done, they are documents that show how it all came together. I’ve run blog posts on each of my notebooks. You can see them all here.

Every writer who also researches has a different process. Here’s my approach:

I know I’m ready to begin writing when the information I’m learning becomes second nature. That doesn’t mean I don’t return to my research as I draft. Sometimes I need to dig deeper or must learn about something I didn’t cover earlier, but I’m most comfortable moving into the writing once I have a general sense of things. Research, like writing, is cyclical rather than linear. (At least that’s been my experience.)

Everything I learn while researching is important to me, the writer. Most of what I learn, though, doesn’t end up in my stories. In order for a fact or detail to make it to the book, it needs to have a reason to be there. If a particular detail affects my character’s life or world, I’ll keep it. If it’s really interesting and fun and a wonderful nugget of information I love but doesn’t fit this requirement, I toss it. Sometimes those treasures find their way into an author’s note, but a lot of times they don’t.

I think Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life (from her poem “Sometimes”) perfectly describe the relationship between researching and writing:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

We can only be astonished if we first pay attention. What makes us curious? We should pick things to study that we find astonishing. What makes our heart sing? We should pay so much attention and be so astonished that we can’t help but tell others about it.