The TeachingBooks Blog
The whole thing started in 2008, when I was working as Congressman John Lewis’s press secretary during his primary campaign.
When I was a kid I was an explorer and a researcher. At the public library I discovered books that opened doors to hidden worlds and strange mysteries. One book led to another, and another, and on it went.
I do not consider myself a poet. I do read plenty of poetry but am trained in prose. After all, I started my writing life as a journalist, on the police beat. Very little time was devoted to crafting just the right phrase; mostly I was panicking to make deadline.
I remember it clearly—the day the inspiration for Papa’s Mechanical Fish (Farrar, 2013) fell in my lap. I was sitting cross-legged on the basement floor of the Old Lighthouse Museum in Michigan City, Indiana, rummaging through a box of photographs when a crumbling, decades-old booklet slipped out from a manila folder.
I was describing my research and note-taking process during a recent school visit, when a boy raised his hand and said, “Sounds like you do homework for a living.”
I love doing research when I’m working on a novel, and not just because it’s a great way to procrastinate. Research can be as vital to a work of fiction as it is to nonfiction. It fleshes out your backstory. It helps you make serendipitous connections. It lets you know–truly know–your characters and setting.
