Everything is Research

I’ve been saying it for years: everything is research. Sometimes it’s a joke, meant to soothe my own misgivings. Most of the time I know it’s also true. As a writer, I never know which experience, notion, or datum will find its way into a story or essay or screenplay or blog, which book will shape my thinking, which movie will clarify some aspect of storytelling, which song will lodge a word or phrase in my mind. And so everything I do and read and see can be accepted, welcomed, and justified (or forgiven) on that basis. Everything is research. Nothing is lost. Nothing goes to waste.

The phrase has taken on new meaning for me these past couple of years, as I’ve explored, and come to accept, my own Aspergian nature. It seems that I study everything, and always have, looking for the rules and patterns, for the safe zones and exits, watching the behaviors of others so that I can find a way to go unnoticed. Everything is research not only for my writing, but for my ongoing project of finding my place in the human world, the alien anthropologist living amongst you.

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