- It's never done
- Research is more fun than writing
Alas, unless a kind witch transforms me into a silverfish I will not be able to survive on research and I may eventually have to sell a text of my own.
Research is done when I've gone down one too many rabbit holes and feel like drinking heavily to forget what I just learned
When the guy paying the bills finally starts asking why the deadline was missed.
My last freelance gig was way too open-ended for my work habits. My editor said, "Eh, finish it sometime before you die." I outlived the publication.
You can keep researching after you start writing, of course. I think it's good to be marinating in your topic of interest while you are in the middle of the process; it keeps everything moving when you consume while producing. It's like staying regular.
Unless this is about nonfiction exclusively, in which case I have no idea without deadlines.
I'm going to try for something like a 1:3 research-to-writing ratio and see where that takes me. "Staying regular" is a good metaphor. Anything to emphasize the physical or the mechanical. Gotta get away from dangerous, procrastination-friendly thoughts that tell me to rely on "inspiration."
Yes yes, inspiration (for me at least) is what gets you interested, not what makes you start to write. But I get the insecurity of it all, it's fucking scary to imagine a reader picking at whatever flaws in your knowledge there might be. I just remind myself that while I do the same thing as a reader, I am always hungry for whoever wrote about that topic, even as I pick at it. You must risk the cringe to write basedly.
