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Erica Ferencik's avatar

The Inciting Incident, The Catalyst (Katalyst????)

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Henriette Lazaridis's avatar

I'm with Julia Glass and I generally do the research after the first draft. For The Clover House, I'd never been in Patras for Carnival until after the book was sold and in edits (so I could make one important change: that the music plays ALL night and day long). For Terra Nova, I'd never been to Antarctica (I will get there one year after the publication of the book). For my most recent manuscript, I didn't go to Los Alamos until after I'd finished an umpteenth draft.

But I also like Zadie Smith's comment she made once somewhere: "I'm a novelist. I don't do research." Research was what I had to do as a Ph.D. student, and I did it but knew it was not my favorite part. When I quit academia, I was so pleased to be able to make things up on purpose.

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