How much milk is in a goat?

As a writer, you can often make up your own rules. You can play around with the parameters of the world you set for yourself, and invent new ways of doing things. But at some point, if you're using any basic framework from the real world, you're going to have to stop and do some research. When you include swords in your story, you had better know what the sharp pointy part is called. And so, we stop and investigate whenever something pops up that we should know more about.

Herein lies the danger of research : a simple question in the hands of an inquisitive mind can turn into a three-hour internet scramble. New questions pop up, new theories emerge, and you can start to lose track of which book you were writing in the first place. The following is an actual outline of the path my research took me down last night, all surrounding a very simple question about goats.

How much milk is in a goat?

.Which led to a lengthy study on how goat's milk is different from cow's milk
..Which led to How to Milk a Goat by Hand
... Which led me to re-discover my passion for Project Heifer (which is, in my opinion, one of the most magnificent charities ever created, and if you have any questions about it please let me know:)


What moon takes the longest to orbit its planet?

The answer, by the way, is Neso, the Thirteenth Moon of Neptune. It takes a grand total of 9,373.99 days to orbit ...

.Which led to researching the names and backgrounds of Neptune's other 12 moons
..Which led to research about comets and other sparkly space junk
...Which made me wish I'd gone to space camp. For those of you who don't know, one of my biggest regrets in life is that I'm not a natural mathematician, because it was my dream to work for NASA. I would like nothing more than to be the head of Mission Control. I would like to be Gene Kranz when I grow up.

How much money does a stripper make?

... I won't go into too many details on this one, but it was coupled with investigations of the yearly salary of a bodyguard, and comic book art of Gotham City.

Granted, I did find plenty of useful information in last night's research marathon, but you can see the problem. Research ADD is a serious condition, affecting 3 of every 5 writers. And, at least in my case, causing a lot of unnecessary bookmarks on my browser that I can't bring myself to delete ... I swear, I will use it all one day!