Oy to the vey.
You know when you hit that flow and you can barely keep up with the words as they tumble out of your brain? Then suddenly (dun, dun, dun) it all comes crashing down?
Because… You don’t know… How… Something works… (in your best Shatner)
Like, what are the relativistic rotation speeds of a comet and its gravitation? When was the heyday of the Mongolian Empire? How does a worm process food out of dirt? How do you do sleight of hand tricks? What are the important arteries in the human body for the murdering? How do cults and terrorist organizations get new followers? What secret societies still exist and what is their secret? Is Bigfoot real?
You know what I’m talking about. I mean, I put it in the title. The random, odd and weird factoids, science, conjecture and theories you never knew you needed to know… until you do. The annoying part is, you can’t really move forward in the story until you do have an understanding of whatever you need at that moment. Hence the oy to the vey. When I get that flow, the last thing I want is to slam into a brick wall of missing information.
One of the more fun things about research is really the just strangeness of what you need at that moment. The bad part is when you get stuck in research mode. You’ll find yourself knee-deep in conspiracy theories as to why Charlemagne was obviously an alien and time traveled with Sigmund Freud for ice cream (I don’t think that’s real). But, how can someone not show up on a list with the really weird Search lists a writer generates? And we’re lucky!
To be honest, I don’t know how people did it before the internet. I think I still know the Dewey Decimal System. Anyway, having access to all the wondrous and ridiculous human musings at your fingertips is pretty amazing.
Though of late, ridiculous seems to be winning. I mean Charlemagne couldn’t be that into ice cream.
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
Jon Gray Lang.com 