Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Research is a Beautiful Thing

They don't teach this trick in Mr. Zippy's Writer School, so I'll spill it here instead: when writing something hard, be sure to include lots of places and times you don't know a thing about. That way you can always read other people's books and still be 'working'.

I did that last night - reading other people's books. Not research! That's something I actually *need* to do, so naturally I'm avoiding that. But sitting and reading for a change was TERRIFIC, not a bit of that 'a' word I'm avoiding.

Today however I noticed that the ice cream diet did not produce its usual thrilling results. Perhaps the key weight loss factor was never sitting down?

Following a hunch, I did a search on the phrase "And then she sat down" in Google Books to see how sitting impacts my writing. (Yes, I'm typing this standing up.) 669 hits! Out of how many scanned books?? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

The link for the hitlist is in the delay tactics list if you're trying to kill time. My gift to you.

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