Anna Staniszewski

Research is essential to nearly all writing projects, though some require it more than others. When I first began my stint as Writer-in-Residence at the Boston Public Library, I spent the first couple of weeks scouring the library’s collection, looking for info about islands to model my fictional island after. Thanks to one of the librarians, I realized Easter Island was a perfect fit. Not only did I get lots of great ecological and geographical information about Easter Island, but the island’s cultural history also inspired parts of my story.

This kind of research was time-consuming but extremely helpful. Since then I’ve found other useful methods of researching that have taken me beyond the library. For example, last January my husband and I went to Hawaii for a belated honeymoon. While we were on the Big Island, I was constantly making mental notes on landscape, vegetation, etc. It was one of the most amazing places I’d ever been and I could almost see my story taking place on a similar kind of island.

The most fun research part of the trip was when I dragged my always-supportive husband to an ethnobotanical garden where we learned all about the indigenous vegetation on the island; that which had been brought over by the Polynesians; and that which Europeans introduced to the island. It was eye-opening to realize that nearly all of the vegetation currently growing on the Big Island wasn’t originally there. Seeing the indigenous (often endemic) vegetation helped me to visualize what the island might have looked like hundreds of years ago.

The whole experience allowed me to immerse myself in a place and to imagine living there, something that’s much more difficult to do from books. Since Easter Island is so remote and expensive to get to, I knew I would probably never have a chance to go there for research. Luckily, my Hawaii trip helped me get a much firmer grasp on the setting of my book (and the honeymoon part was fun too).

What’s next on my research list? My current WIP is set in an alternate reality in which people have yet to land on the moon. I’ve already done a bit of traditional research on the space race and its effects on our culture and technology. Now I’m moving on to the fun part of watching sections of the From the Earth to the Moon series (disc 1 just arrived in my mailbox yesterday). I’m looking forward to sucking up lots of knowledge and inspiration!

• Categories: Resources, WIP, Writing Rants