I don’t think I would have become a semi-serious writer before the Internet. I like to be correct over details, and before the Internet, I would have had to do much more difficult research to write anything, even a fantasy novel. I would have spent hours in libraries, searching for books and hoping the titles yielded the information I was looking for. I might search through an encyclopedia or two to glean some data about my topic. I would have spent so much time researching that I wouldn’t be able to experience the fun of writing. It would have been a lot like writing my dissertation. Urgk.
For example, in Whose Hearts are Mountains (my favorite book to illustrate the wonders of an Internet search), my online searches included:
- Underground dwellings
- Owyhee Desert
- Wilson’s Sink
- desert flora
- desert fauna
- dry land crops
- water reclaiming
- biodiesel
- jatropha diesel
- castor diesel
- ricin poisoning symptoms
- castor pomace
- sage tea
- smallpox
- bubonic plague
- bioweapons
- guanacos
- mules
Imagine having to go to a library for this search. Imagine telling the librarian you need a book on ricin poisoning. Imagine taking notes on all these items (and because we’re talking about the days without the Internet it’s also the days before a laptop) with pen and paper, and trying to arrange all those notes.
Imagine trying to juggle all these notes while writing.
Imagine feeling like writing after all that. I don’t know how anyone did it.
Using the internet, though, creates a responsibility to the writer. I must check the validity of all my sources to make sure the information is correct. Here is a source that explains the process of assessing the quality of information on the Internet. I use a lot of my college training to do this process, but anyone should be able to walk through the process outlined in the website above. (The process is also handy for sounding out claims of mysterious cures, deep state conspiracies, and urban legends.)
Whose Hearts are Mountains is a story I wanted to write about thirty years ago, but I found the research too daunting. It wasn’t “writing what I know” — it had to happen in the middle of a desert, and I knew nothing about deserts. I had that dissertation to write. But I could write it thirty years later simply because of the advent of the Internet.
Words Like Me 