Or, Finding Someone Who Wants to Talk About Soil Bacteria

Novel-specific research is like wedding planning or pregnancy. Nobody else wants to hear about it.

Writers are known to have suspect search histories. We are also famous for “talking through” our writing issues. My running group contains a fantastic cross-section of careers, cultures, educational qualification, backgrounds and perspectives, and aside from our families, jobs, hopes and dreams, what else do we have to talk about while we run six to ten miles, three times a week? Writing-specific research can start with a simple conversation.

How it began

“I’m researching soil diseases,” I explained to Micki, another writer, while panting up the hill behind her. I’d been trying to find a good way to kill off an entire spaceship full of people.

“I found it!” I crowed to her the next week, same hill. “The bacteria that kills my beets is a real thing! And it can be triggered by what happened on board already! Everything is falling into place!”

The problem was, at the end of the day, nobody I know (not my writer friends, running friends, friend-friends or any of my children) wanted to hear me talk about plant pathogens. They just didn’t. Novel-specific research is like wedding planning or pregnancy. Unless you’re the one getting married or having the baby, nobody else wants to hear about it more than once.

Read the rest here.
http://karenhoughwrites.com/2021/07/w...