Jumping Hurdles

Last week, I mentioned limiting beliefs in my blog. I found another limiting belief this week (surprise, surprise):

"Research is too hard and time consuming."

This came up as I was writing the passage below in my book:

Book Excerpt:

“I am not sure, but it’s another piece of the puzzle. And any new information is great. Look, I got some poster board, stickies, and colored markers for us. I thought we could draw up a timeline diagram of all that has happened. Then we can start adding notes using the stickies and taping pictures up so that we can gather a collage of your experience. What do you think?” Jan said in her loving and perky way.

“Wow, sounds intensive and a bit overwhelming.” Charlie said with a nervous laugh.

“Yeah, it does seem that way at first, but if we approach it like a creative project, I think it will be fun.”

“Ok, let’s do this.” Charlie said while nodding her head.

With Charlie’s notes and dictation, Jan drew up a full timeline of the events. Next, she took the stickies and wrote down all the things they wanted to get answers too. One sticky mentioned researching women’s hairstyles from past eras. Another sticky mentioned researching women’s clothing styles from past eras. They also wanted to do some research on areas that are wet with green pastures. Charlie took all the stickies and stuck them on the board.

As you can see, I am going to need to do some research if I want the book to be believable. I am a little like the character Charlie in the book. The research part feels very overwhelming. So, I took Jan’s advice and decided to look at it as a creative project. I made several notes of what I found on hairstyles and clothing of past eras. I found that it was rather enjoyable reading up on something that I did not know very much about.

Last week I mentioned that one of my limiting beliefs was that I was not an expert on the subject of my book. That is still true. But with today’s technology, we have answers to everything at our fingertips. I started thinking about this and how fortunate we are as writers in today’s times. How did writers from 50 or 100 years ago do it? I really have to respect authors of the past as they had to work a lot harder at fact checking than I will ever have to do.

Technology has made jumping the writing hurdles easier for someone like me and I am grateful to have access to such a vast amount of data. The fear that I am not an expert has subsided, because I now know that I don’t have to be an expert. __________________________________________________

“I believe anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do.” –Eleanor Roosevelt