Is Research Rapture Overwhelming Your Creative Process?

How to manage the tension between accuracy and momentum

Photo by Fran on Unsplash

---

Hi Everyone,

I once heard the late novelist Oakley Hall describe “research rapture” as an occupational hazard of creative writing. I knew precisely what he meant. It’s easy for me to get so enthralled in the hunt for details (as I did, for example, when researching WWII midget submarines for my novel Glorious Boy) that I fail to notice how much of the information I’m collecting serves absolutely no purpose in my book.

Research rapture can cost you time and send you off on complicated tangents that will muck up your story and leave you stranded in a swamp of fascinating but irrelevant details. How to negotiate that edge between enough background information… and infinity? Here are 6 tips that have helped me maintain a productive balance while writing my novels, memoirs, and research-based nonfiction.

---

---

1. Write not “what you know” but what you need to know

If you love to research, that hackneyed motto, “Write what you know,” can be lethal. You’ll never start writing your book if you wait to “know” everything about it.

The truth is, nobody knows everything about their subject. That applies even if you’re writing a memoir. You’ll inevitably have blind spots about the people around you, the historical context, not to mention your own true motives. Some of these blind spots can be filled in with research, but many can only be addressed through the process of thinking and connecting the dots as you write.

Great literature is not a regurgitation of knowledge but a deeply felt quest for understanding. It’s the quest that gives both story and prose their energy. That’s why, for better and for worse, my way through has always been to conduct most of my research on a need-to-know basis, starting with the most emotionally salient questions as they arise.

---

Get in on this special Birthday Discount for MFA Lore before it expires on July 22!

---