Research

No one tells you this at first, but creative writing often involves a significant amount of research. Eventually, "Write what you know" turns into "Write what you like, but make it convincing."

I'm not afraid of a little light research - I spent a good few nights with the Big Book of American Tornadoes (TM) for a literature class last year (we love you, K. David Jackson), and I've grown rather fond of Wikipedia, that catch-all of potentially verifiable facts, since then. I spent most of the summer online, doing research on everything from Texas hotels to Civil War battlefields, wildlife parks, and bespoke gifts. As I recall, I spent one enjoyable afternoon with the Cedar Point website (http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/park/rides/coasters/) which lets one "ride" the coasters from the comfort of one's desk. Since I don't do well with roller coasters, watching the track from the POV of the camera mounted on the cars is about the closest I'm going to come to riding any time soon.

Given that background, I wasn't daunted by the prospect of research for class this year, as long as it didn't involve thousand-page biographies or in-depth studies of World War II, or something else along those lines. I've become overly chummy with Wikipedia since September, and I've found a little bit of everything (thanks to Google) along the way.

There have, however, been some interesting moments. In no particular order:

-For a novel I wrote in college, I ended up researching ferry times between England and Ireland.

-The piece I've been doing for class all year involves a lot of roadside Americana, much of which I've yet to visit. There are some great sites about this stuff, including pictures, but two sites stand above the rest. The first is the Graceland site, which offers 360-degree panoramas of some of the rooms. Second is Historic Route 66 (http://www.historic66.com/), which takes one turn-by-turn down the Mother Road.

-Speaking of roads, I've logged a few hours on Mapquest this year, too. That aerial view Google Earth-esque thing they're doing now? Priceless.

-When my semester portfolio was returned last week, my professor told me to research the Church of Elvis. Turns out that it's a subgroup of the Universal Life Church, which will ordain anyone with only the completion of an online form. For $4.95, you, too, can become a Jedi Knight.

-I've been called out a few times, too. Someone in class suggested that a severe burn victim couldn't take morphine because it would leak from the skin. I don't know about that, but I did find that third-degree burns are less painful than they appear because some nerves are destroyed.

-Best yet though, by a large margin, goes to my friend in China who read a draft of one of my pieces and spotted a D&D anachronism - I was using terms from the wrong edition of the game. Since most of my knowledge of D&D's rules and characters comes from Wikipedia (honestly, Ian, I swear), I was most grateful to him for having that particularly obscure knowledge set.