I love to research. I don’t know what it is, whether its learning something new, or discovering new areas of interest, I can’t say. All I know is that I will often research a topic that I’ve heard about or for a storyline. For instance, my new story that I want to right, the main character, Sam, discovers that she is adopted when her sister dies. So, I’ve been researching adoption and what sort of effects it has on people and discovered that there is a whole lot of information about Late Discovery Adoptions, which is where the adoptee, the person who was adopted, didn’t find out until they were an adult, quite often into their thirties and beyond. It is an actual thing and referred to as LDA. It is quite life changing for many of them, and they’ve often felt like they’ve been lied to, instead of having to face the adoption issue as they grow up and accept it, they are suddenly not sure of who, or what they are anymore, and have an identity crisis.

I’m also researching an illness for my other story and have lined up a couple of people who have been through it, so I can talk to them about their experiences, find out what course of action was taken, and how they got through their illness. It’s like learning about another aspect of a person that I haven’t experienced before, learning something personal about them, and defining a new depth of friendship.

Being someone who has a lot of empathy, I feel for all the people that I have studied, or researched, or talked to. I feel their pain, joy, relief, sadness and I hope that I can accurately show that in my stories. Show how they feel, what they are thinking, how they react.

More research to be done, but things are progressing well, and I feel like I am nearly ready to start plotting one of the books.

In the meantime, I am doing a brief review of compromising Positions, finding problems that need addressing, which I can sort out in the full indepth edit that will follow. Its a great opportunity to add more information and make the story shine just that little bit more.

That’s my week taken care of, how is yours going? Hope its productive.

Thanks for checking in.

Catherine