When to call in the experts
May. 7th, 2002 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrSpent an hour on the Internet looking for web sites on Hotshot wildfire crews, and getting more and more confused and frustrated. I can't decide whether to abandon this story or not.
The problem is, I'm sinking into the research like La Brea tar pit, and there doesn't seem to be any end to it. I can't write it because I don't know enough, and I can't get enough of a handle on the research. I'm trying to write a story about a totally foreign culture. I haven't felt this bad since I was trying to figure out how to write about Manhattan gay bath houses in the early 1980s for The Wild Swans.
I know someone I could ask: my sister's sister-in-law has been doing wildfire fighting for years. I've met her like once, and I'm sure that I could call her up and say, I've got this story I'm working on; could you vett it for me? Or at least help me kick the idea around so I can figure out how to get it off the ground?
I've never had anyone refuse when I've approached them as a potential expert. In my experience, people are flattered to be asked to lend their expertise. But there are some people I don't have the nerve to ask, and they're generally people who are in fields with a lot of involved technical information. Like I had that story "The Silver Answer," about the woman cop psychically linked with her K-9 partner, and I worked on it as hard as I could for months. A woman I work with is married to a K-9 officer, and I never could work up the nerve to ask him to vett it. I don't know why. Maybe cops are too intimidating. Maybe I was afraid it would sound too much like a bad cop show and he'd laugh at me. Ridiculous. And so I never sold the story (although I marketed it to a lot of places), and I keep taking it out and picking at it every two years or so.
So: do I try contacting Barb or not? The problem is, I don't feel I know enough information to know what to ask her. And so I read book after book after book, trying to absorb an enormous amount of material that people spend their whole careers learning. And trying to hypothesize out the future developments of technology. I'm ready to tear my hair out in despair.
I can't quite bring myself to abandon it, and I can't quite bring myself to contact Barb, and I can't quite bring myself to write it.
Aaargh.
Sometimes I feel like such a greenhorn ninny. Disgusted with myself tonight.
Snarling,
Peg
The problem is, I'm sinking into the research like La Brea tar pit, and there doesn't seem to be any end to it. I can't write it because I don't know enough, and I can't get enough of a handle on the research. I'm trying to write a story about a totally foreign culture. I haven't felt this bad since I was trying to figure out how to write about Manhattan gay bath houses in the early 1980s for The Wild Swans.
I know someone I could ask: my sister's sister-in-law has been doing wildfire fighting for years. I've met her like once, and I'm sure that I could call her up and say, I've got this story I'm working on; could you vett it for me? Or at least help me kick the idea around so I can figure out how to get it off the ground?
I've never had anyone refuse when I've approached them as a potential expert. In my experience, people are flattered to be asked to lend their expertise. But there are some people I don't have the nerve to ask, and they're generally people who are in fields with a lot of involved technical information. Like I had that story "The Silver Answer," about the woman cop psychically linked with her K-9 partner, and I worked on it as hard as I could for months. A woman I work with is married to a K-9 officer, and I never could work up the nerve to ask him to vett it. I don't know why. Maybe cops are too intimidating. Maybe I was afraid it would sound too much like a bad cop show and he'd laugh at me. Ridiculous. And so I never sold the story (although I marketed it to a lot of places), and I keep taking it out and picking at it every two years or so.
So: do I try contacting Barb or not? The problem is, I don't feel I know enough information to know what to ask her. And so I read book after book after book, trying to absorb an enormous amount of material that people spend their whole careers learning. And trying to hypothesize out the future developments of technology. I'm ready to tear my hair out in despair.
I can't quite bring myself to abandon it, and I can't quite bring myself to contact Barb, and I can't quite bring myself to write it.
Aaargh.
Sometimes I feel like such a greenhorn ninny. Disgusted with myself tonight.
Snarling,
Peg
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(no subject)
Date: 2002-05-08 07:05 am (UTC)No idea why I'm offering advice, but...I think you should contact her. Out of the scads of research you've done, maybe pick out a couple of things that peaked your interest and have them in reserve. You may not need them. Even though you don't know enough to know what to ask, so many people just like to talk about what they do - what's exciting about it, what's boring, what's frustrating. If you can get her talking, the conversation might develop naturally into something helpful to you; ideas might solidify; questions will suggest themselves. Or, you might discover definitively that it's not going to work for your story. Either way, would be a really interesting conversation...