Doing your research

I can distinctly remember asking this question at a workshop when I first started writing:

'Is it possible that writers only feel entitled to do research once they're published?'

Back then, I was conscious that I was squeezing my writing into a tiny window of time, and was still treating it as an embarrassing secret. To undertake in-depth research seemed presumptuous, somehow. I couldn't guarantee that my work would get an audience at all, so what was the point in wasting precious time on resea...