{"id":8054,"date":"2013-05-03T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=8054"},"modified":"2013-05-03T06:00:08","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T11:00:08","slug":"in-search-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=8054","title":{"rendered":"In Search Of…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Art<\/a>
Art by Sean Phillips from surebeatsworking.blogspot.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Investigations are part and parcel of being a creative person especially a fiction writer. Something triggers a thought and that leads to one thing, which leads to another and likely to another.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s the trigger? A piece of conversation. A throwaway line of dialogue in a film. A song lyric. The way a sunbeam falls across a picture in the living room. The way a bird is perched in a tree. The snake that\u2019s ready to steal the bird\u2019s eggs.<\/p>\n

Any of these can lead me down an investigatory path.<\/p>\n

Like Sara<\/a>, I love to learn and keep on learning. Like her I have learned to read and appreciate reading for information. I can\u2019t read as much non-fiction as she does (One a month? That\u2019s waaaay beyond me.) but I do read a couple of magazines that get delivered to the house, usually from cover to cover. I\u2019m reading more fiction than ever before, though, and reading a wider range of genres (including literary fiction) more than ever before, too.<\/p>\n

Usually if I\u2019m researching the physics I need for a science fiction story I can go far, far afield looking for the fringe stuff. Which almost always leads me to watching hours and hours of UFO \u2018footage\u2019 on YouTube.<\/p>\n

Recently I started doing some digging on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and found quite a few articles that kept me engrossed for hours and hours. Then I went to the Internet to dig some more. Probably lost half a day on that one.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m always looking for the piece of information that will lead me to something else. And maybe that something else will lead me farther off the path I\u2019ve chosen.<\/p>\n

I could say that the old TV show In Search Of\u2026 was the start of it, but in truth it\u2019s really been part of me ever since I learned how to use the library to do research. The World Encyclopedia – that wonderful, paper version of the Internet – was the best thing ever. I learned more in my time with that wealth of information than I did in any one year in public school. Hands down.<\/p>\n

What really gets me going is learning about space flight. Well, I should say potential space flight between the planets and eventually the stars. Investigating ideas about planetary propulsion that\u2019s advanced way beyond the chemical fuel lifters that shot us to the moon grabs my imagination and takes hold. I can spend hours and hours reading up on this stuff. I love going down those paths. I\u2019m like a little kid in a toy store when that happens. Or a candy store. Take your pick.<\/p>\n

And all of that, all the research I do ends up somehow informing the story whether I use it or not. It all stays somewhere in the back of my brain for later use. I mean, you never know when a supporting character will need to throw out a useless trivia fact to make himself seem important, right?<\/p>\n

Yeah I can kill hours and hours reading on a wide variety of subjects ostensibly for \u2018research\u2019 purposes and because I say it can be useful in a story or a novel. Maybe I was influenced more by Leonard Nimoy\u2019s show than I thought. Maybe I\u2019m always In Search Of\u2026<\/p>\n

Something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Investigations are part and parcel of being a creative person especially a fiction writer. Something triggers a thought and that leads to one thing, which leads to another and likely to another. But what\u2019s the trigger? A piece of conversation. A throwaway line of dialogue in a film. A song lyric. The way a sunbeam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[348,539,620,623,928],"class_list":["post-8054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-encyclopedia","tag-in-search-of","tag-leonard-nimoy","tag-library","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}