In Love With the Research

       The trouble with researching is that I can fall in and never come out.  I'm crazy about conversation with a professional over hazelnut coffee.  And I'm a taker of notes on paper napkins, party hats, the backs of paper plates.
       I remember a time when I wasn't even curious.  In the late 1970s, or early 80s, I realized I could starve while writing -- and even selling -- short stories.  I was working as an elementary school secretary, teaching a short-story writing class at a nearby tech center, and realized it was time to move up.  I needed -- and badly wanted -- to make a living with my writing. 
        I signed up for a feature-writing night class at a nearby university.  This was a half-hearted decision because I was having an affair with fiction.   "Pretend" was in my bones and blood; my gray matter was full of make-believe.  So that was the tough part -- making a conscious choice to show up, evenings, put my elbows on the desk, my chin in my hands, and pay attention.
        The first thing I learned was this:  it's essentail for a writer to be curious.  Question everything; poke around, search for the story behind the story.  Never do, or be, less.  I decided to be curious.
       By the end of that semester, I'd sold three of the four features I'd written for class, and the instructor invited me on as a staff writer for the award-winning magazine she edited.  Shortly thereafter, I became Senior Staff Writer and stayed at it for nine years -- until I sold my first book.
       The point I am making is that curiosity spawns some fantastic research.  Today I sat over the aforementioned coffee with professional photographer Jennifer J. Parker (visit her website to see her turbaned and seated on a camel in Africa.)  For two hours and thirty minutes, she revealed the secrets of taking, and developing, photography that I would need for my new book. 
       In all these years, I've spent hundreds of hours reading, interviewing and taking notes.  And I love it.  I invite you to love it too.  Develop a curiosity by saying and knowing, in your heart, that you are curious.  What you say, you practice.  What you practice, you become.