Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Thanks, Tanita

Tanita S. Davis referred me to an article by Cory Doctorow called Writing in the Age of Distraction. I'm very easily distracted, so, of course, I couldn't resist reading this piece.

Doctorow gives some advice on how to keep working. His most interesting thought is not to worry about writing more than a page or two a day. (A massive undertaking for me these past few months.) But another eye catcher was his suggestion that writers not do research.

What he meant was Don't do research right now. Keep writing and do the research later. I cannot tell you how many times I've come to a complete stop in order to research some minor point, sometimes even e-mailing people for information. And then I ended up not using any of the material I found.

So, yeah, I think he's onto something with putting off research.

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