[PUBLIC POST] The joys of research

[ljwrites]

Hearty apologies for two weeks (I think?) of silence, I've been tired and lazy and overworked. I've also been reading a book called The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction by James Alexander Thom, which understandably spends a lot of time discussing research. It's not a book that speaks to my particular needs; Thom wrote novels about events from the past few centuries, not two millennia ago, so a lot of the materials he discusses just didn't exist in my time period or were lost. Still, his general points about sources and verification are valid for any period, I think, and I'm just happy to be reading advice specific to historical fiction as a lot of the stuff I come across online tends to be geared to speculative fiction.

What role does research play in your own project or projects, given the genre or genres you work in? What do you like or dislike about research? What are some helpful or unhelpful resources and methods?