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Bri Wrote..This.

“I'm writing a book. I wrote a blog about it. I'm as trendy as Gap khakis.”

November 22, 2010 I love research or OMG COWS?!!

I love the research process of writing because it lets you be a kid again, essentially, and delve completely into what you want to know.  Remember when you were young and memorized dinosaur names? Or read everything you could about dolphins?  Writing takes you back there.

Whenever I have a project, I always go into “research mode.”  For the not-finished celebrity script I wrote, I read countless books and watched several movies about actresses.  For SecretHistoricalYA, I have a book and podcasts.  I’ve yet to write a single word for that.

And now, for FUNNY GIRL, I am in research mode.  Which is a problem.  Because I get really into research and convince myself that I can’t write a single word until the research is done or at least half done.  But here’s where it gets hard:

FUNNY GIRL is about a girl comedian who has a ridiculous road trip to New York City. I love NYC!  I heart it. And so, of course, I figured why I should do some research of the city!   Not only did I do some in-person travel research, but I downloaded podcasts of NYC history.

But most of my research focusing on really one place. Rockefeller Center.  Why? I’m obsessed with it. I think it’s beautiful and has a fascinating history. I love how it has a million tourists on it all of the time. I love it at Christmas. (Listen to the Bowery Boys’ podcast for it!) and even though maybe 10 pages of my novel take place in/somewhere around that group of buildings, I felt it suit to listen to multiple podcasts about it, borrow a friend’s copy of Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center.

Okay, fine, I did a little research on a building and maybe that would flavor my writing to make it “come alive” for the reader. But then like Alice falling down that proverbial hole.. it got deeper.

Since my MC is a comedian, and I’m always thinking I’m not funny, I decided I must research comedy!  And that’s a big pretty spectrum. Because there’s a thousand types of comedy it would seem and why did I need to go into all of this detail of research for a YA novel?

So I’ve got comedy routine cds, and I’ve read interviews with humor writers, I’ve got countless podcasts on sketch comedy and humor downloaded.  I’ve watched hours of TV comedy.  I have a book that’s essays on the best comedic moments of all time.

But what don’t I have? Much written. Why? Because I’m letting fear transform into “research” and it’s overwhelming me.

So I better quit before this continues to be a blog all about how to go about NOT WRITING your novel.  If that’s what I was going for, then A+ Bri!

But I have yet to research cows!  So that part remains a mystery in my YA.  Despite the fact there are cows.

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