Sunday 23 April 2023 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM (UTC+00)
Palace Court Theatre (downstairs rehearsal room)
Upper Hinton Rd, Bournemouth, BH1 2AJ
Intertwingling writing with research A talk by Sue Thomas
Over the last thirty years I’ve written a wide range of fiction and nonfiction. Every book began with a single idea which then kicked off all kinds of investigations. They in turn led me down many rabbit-holes of new information, and there were times when I became completely lost in research. It’s always an adventure, and I always manage to dig myself out again, but the detours can certainly take up a lot of time and energy.
So when I was invited to offer a talk at the first Bournemouth Writing Festival, I emerged from the tangle of my current novel, now in its fifth year of writing, with the idea that I would speak about how writing and research intertwingle and how we can make it work for us.
In 1974 the computer pioneer Ted Nelson wrote that “Everything is deeply intertwingled”, continuing “In an important sense there are no “subjects” at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly.”
That’s how I came to the title of this talk – it’s all about the tricky business of handling the intertwingling of what you discover with what you want to write about.
I’ll be talking about the questions I’ve tried to answer in my books, looking at what other writers have to say about research, and discussing methods of gathering and organising material. I hope you can make it!
PS Regretfully there will be no streaming or video of this talk but I plan to turn it into an article later this year.
What a wonderful topic! I personally love the research, but I lose my balance and forget to write. How do you keep yourself from getting trapped in rabbit holes?
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I also love the research – a bit too much sometimes! Re rabbit holes — I’m not sure I *can* stop myself from getting trapped. This current novel has demanded constant untangling, but I’m getting there now!
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Glad to hear that you haven’t been trapped in a rabbit hole! I am sometimes.
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