Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "research"
The Things You Don't Know
My fictional biographies are usually populated with people that I can imagine. I mean, I was 20 or 30 once. I remember a lot of what happened in those times. And I know a fair amount about what it's like to be that age today, through colleagues and family.
But there are definitely some things I don't know about when I'm writing. For example, when I first started writing fantasy, I needed to know how far you could ride a horse in a day, as most fantasy involves riding horses, not cars or other modes of transportation. At least on the world I'd invented.
Some of the people in my fictional biographies have had jobs similar to jobs I've had. In my early career, I worked for a bunch of different kinds of companies. And some parts of businesses are fairly universal.
But this current novel is set on a cattle ranch. Do you know how many acres you need for a cattle ranch? Neither did I. Do you know where in the U.S. there are cattle ranches? Neither did I. Do you know how many cattle you can fit on a ranch of a certain size? Neither did I. Do you know how many people it takes to run a ranch of a certain size. Neither did I.
Fortunately, I have all the statistics in the world at my fingertips courtesy of Google. Now, you do have to be a little careful about what links you trust to have the correct information. And I usually try more than one to make sure the information is reasonably the same.
But it must have been challenging to write novels in the days before the Internet. You would have had to either write about things you'd experienced - or your friends or family had experienced. Or spend months or years researching. Or make it up, and hope you were close to the truth. Or not care if the reader called you out for the things you don't know.
But there are definitely some things I don't know about when I'm writing. For example, when I first started writing fantasy, I needed to know how far you could ride a horse in a day, as most fantasy involves riding horses, not cars or other modes of transportation. At least on the world I'd invented.
Some of the people in my fictional biographies have had jobs similar to jobs I've had. In my early career, I worked for a bunch of different kinds of companies. And some parts of businesses are fairly universal.
But this current novel is set on a cattle ranch. Do you know how many acres you need for a cattle ranch? Neither did I. Do you know where in the U.S. there are cattle ranches? Neither did I. Do you know how many cattle you can fit on a ranch of a certain size? Neither did I. Do you know how many people it takes to run a ranch of a certain size. Neither did I.
Fortunately, I have all the statistics in the world at my fingertips courtesy of Google. Now, you do have to be a little careful about what links you trust to have the correct information. And I usually try more than one to make sure the information is reasonably the same.
But it must have been challenging to write novels in the days before the Internet. You would have had to either write about things you'd experienced - or your friends or family had experienced. Or spend months or years researching. Or make it up, and hope you were close to the truth. Or not care if the reader called you out for the things you don't know.
Research vs. Life Knowledge
Most of my novels are based on things I know, either my life or things I can imagine.
But some of them have had elements of things I knew nothing about. In Gift for Michael, for example, I had the invention of a plane that could be flown remotely. I was reminded by my Facebook memories the other day of the time I interviewed an aviation specialist to make sure that it might be possible - some day - to have a plane be flown without a pilot in the cockpit. The expert assured me that it was, indeed, possible.
But even for the books that don't include technology about which I know little, there are still things that I may not know. I think I've written before about using the Internet to do research. I certainly did this a lot for my dad's biography, in addition to using his papers and others' memories.
In today's writing, I wanted to research about Mass Gen, a Boston-area hospital I knew about from when I lived in Boston just after I graduated from college. I had had my main female character's aunt work there. At the start of the novel, Aunt Olivia is an x-ray tech at Mass Gen, living in Revere, MA.
But now, 30 years later in the novel's timeline, I wondered what Aunt Olivia might be doing. I wanted her to have had a career with the hospital. So, I looked up Mass Gen. Little did I know that Mass Gen and Brigham and Women's Hospital - longtime rivals in Boston - had merged years ago. And that Partners Healthcare, which I knew from a doctor friend, was the name of the merged organization, until recently when they rebranded to Mass Gen Brigham.
When I worked for Northrop Grumman in the 2000s, we were supporters of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) at HHS. ONC was trying to get a National Health Information Network (NHIN) developed. In the process, they had promulgated the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and set standards for interoperability between EHRs, which would pave the path for sharing of medical records between hospital systems, and also the creation of the NHIN.
In those days, I knew a lot about EHRs and the NHIN, and although the NHIN never happened, EHRs have become pretty widely adopted. A few years back, in fact, the Military Health System (MHS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) adopted the same EHR - Cerner - which was supposed to help with interoperability between MHS records for active military personnel and VA records for veterans. Hasn't really happened, much like the NHIN, but it does mean EHRs have become pretty commonplace in hospitals and medical offices.
Anyway, as I said, I knew a doctor at Partners. Because he was one of the leading doctors working on the NHIN and the standards for EHRs. I followed his blog for years. And we were even Facebook friends for a long time.
And with my newfound research, I was able to flavor in a little of that part of my life knowledge into this novel, through Aunt Olivia and her work at Mass Gen, then Partners Healthcare, and then Mass Gen Brigham.
Sometimes my research meshes with my life knowledge. Isn't that fun?
But some of them have had elements of things I knew nothing about. In Gift for Michael, for example, I had the invention of a plane that could be flown remotely. I was reminded by my Facebook memories the other day of the time I interviewed an aviation specialist to make sure that it might be possible - some day - to have a plane be flown without a pilot in the cockpit. The expert assured me that it was, indeed, possible.
But even for the books that don't include technology about which I know little, there are still things that I may not know. I think I've written before about using the Internet to do research. I certainly did this a lot for my dad's biography, in addition to using his papers and others' memories.
In today's writing, I wanted to research about Mass Gen, a Boston-area hospital I knew about from when I lived in Boston just after I graduated from college. I had had my main female character's aunt work there. At the start of the novel, Aunt Olivia is an x-ray tech at Mass Gen, living in Revere, MA.
But now, 30 years later in the novel's timeline, I wondered what Aunt Olivia might be doing. I wanted her to have had a career with the hospital. So, I looked up Mass Gen. Little did I know that Mass Gen and Brigham and Women's Hospital - longtime rivals in Boston - had merged years ago. And that Partners Healthcare, which I knew from a doctor friend, was the name of the merged organization, until recently when they rebranded to Mass Gen Brigham.
When I worked for Northrop Grumman in the 2000s, we were supporters of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) at HHS. ONC was trying to get a National Health Information Network (NHIN) developed. In the process, they had promulgated the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and set standards for interoperability between EHRs, which would pave the path for sharing of medical records between hospital systems, and also the creation of the NHIN.
In those days, I knew a lot about EHRs and the NHIN, and although the NHIN never happened, EHRs have become pretty widely adopted. A few years back, in fact, the Military Health System (MHS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) adopted the same EHR - Cerner - which was supposed to help with interoperability between MHS records for active military personnel and VA records for veterans. Hasn't really happened, much like the NHIN, but it does mean EHRs have become pretty commonplace in hospitals and medical offices.
Anyway, as I said, I knew a doctor at Partners. Because he was one of the leading doctors working on the NHIN and the standards for EHRs. I followed his blog for years. And we were even Facebook friends for a long time.
And with my newfound research, I was able to flavor in a little of that part of my life knowledge into this novel, through Aunt Olivia and her work at Mass Gen, then Partners Healthcare, and then Mass Gen Brigham.
Sometimes my research meshes with my life knowledge. Isn't that fun?
