I admit it: this is just another excuse to buy more books

[surioara]

Okay, so my original time line for having my plague doctor story finished by the end of January probably won't happen.  Not because I've been slacking on the writing, mind you.  More because I've realized I have a metric shit ton more research to do in order to give this story the depth and detail it deserves.  Writers tend to become experts on the subjects pertaining to their stories.  I need to become something of an expert on:

• the Spanish flu and all of the scientific, social, and political factors related therein
• Danvers State Hospital, including architecture/layout/appearance, history, daily routines, staffing, the geography of the surrounding area, the socio-economic state of the region and nearby towns, etc.
• combat training for Army draftees in 1918
• transportation and processes involved in moving soliders from one cantonment to another and in deploying American troops to France
• what daily life was like for a draftee
• what daily life was like for the families of draftees
• what daily life was like in a lunatic asylum in 1918
• what the medical field was capable of in 1918 (that was an interesting time period since this was shortly after American medical schools adopted actual scientific standards.  Until the end of the 19th century, most certified doctors barely even had college degrees, much less advanced education and training in scientific fields)
• understanding and treatment of schizophrenia (primarily paranoid and catatonic types) in 1918 New England
• the education and tranining processes for nurses in 1918
• the political, social, and economic state of the northeastern United States in 1918
• the nitty gritty of sheep farming/ranching/whatever
• social contstructs within small agricultural towns in the American midwest in 1918 and the impact of the draft and war on those towns
• tuburculosis
• plagues: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic
• human anatomy
• stages of decomposition and decay (you know, for the zombie parts)
• a hundred zillion other things that relate to the characters and the plot

These are only the biggest and most obvious topics on which I need to have a very detailed understanding if I want this story to be even half as good as I'm imagining.

This is exactly what I love about writing.  It encourages me to learn about things that fascinate me but which I might not devote the time to learning about otherwise.