Research Big Three

My normal blogging routine is to post an entry on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Since Wednesday is a holiday, I’m shifting my blogging schedule slightly this week.

I’ve discovered that there are three invaluable research tools to a writer–all available on line.

By far the most important single research is a good dictionary.  I’ve relied on Dictionary.com at  http://dictionary.reference.com/ since I started writing. I know that there are others, but I’ve just gotten used to this site.  An aspiring author should check out what is available and use it regularly.  When I’m writing, I always have a window open to Dictionary.com just to save time.

For research that requires more than just how to spell a word, I’ve come to rely heavily on Wikipedia, which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page .  I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve found just the factoid that I needed there. It is a great site and its free.

Recently, I discovered a new site on the web that is very useful for finding out factoids that aren’t readily searchable. For instance, recently I was working on a piece in which an artist received a commission from her gallery for selling one of her painting. How big of a commission does an art gallery get? I had no idea, so I posted the question on Askville.com at askville.amazon.com/ under a nom de plume.

Within four hours, I had several answers that gave me the information that I needed. (50% on the average, but it varies.) Ever since, if I have a question that isn’t easily researchable, I post it on Askville.com and normally get a useful reply within a few hours. I also received expressions of sympathy from painters who thought I was a brother suffering artist and a suggestion to post my paintings on a poster’s on line gallery, but that’s the nature of the Internet, so I didn’t mind in the least.

I encourage aspiring writers to become familiar with the site, but not too get too involved. If you get too involved, you’ll use up all of your writing time! I know from experience!