Down The Rabbit Hole We Go!

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s from Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it? That we go “down the rabbit hole” into research? How many of us have visited there?

And –how many of us can get out? That may be the better question. Why does every answer lead to another question?

Because–because we are lucky.

And here is Kate Woodworth with her own particularly unusual adventures.  And she speaks for us all! Who but a writer could have such a fabulous and hilarious journey?

Once You Were Normal. Now You Write Fiction

By Kate Woodworth

You know how it goes: You’re struggling with a line of dialogue and a thought rushes past, holding a stopwatch and muttering “I’m late! Deadline!” Next thing you know, you’re down the rabbit hole, telling yourself that research is necessary. Are there chestnut trees on Maine islands? What about skunks? How do zoning issues get resolved in small towns? What’s a swimmeret?

You are now deep in Tunnel One. The original question has disappeared. The ticking of the deadline clock is no longer audible. Instead, you hear the murmuring of future readers growing louder. They are wearing deerstalker hats and looking for your missteps with high-power magnifying lenses. You should quit researching. Get back to work!

For motivation, you show some pages to a trusted friend, hoping for an enthusiastic, “It’s GREAT! Don’t spend time researching! Just write!” Instead, you get: “I don’t believe your main character knows anything about farming.” Unsurprising because, of course, you don’t know anything about farming. No more internet research. It’s time to talk to experts.

Suddenly, you’re in a world that resembles the real one, except that strangers are willing to answer random questions simply because you have identified yourself as a writer. All those years trying to amass education and experience so as to appear credible in the working world, and now all you need to tell people is that you like to make up stories and they’ll explain how to trim a goat’s hooves and all the ways a tomato crop can fail.

Some things—like birth—are hard to witness unless you live on a farm, and so hours are lost watching lambs being delivered on YouTube. Others—like lobster courtship and mating—are so surprisingly fascinating that you find your friends backing away, unwilling to listen yet again to your nattering about the convenience of sperm packets that can be stored for a year or more.

By now, you’re essentially living in the research rabbit hole.

Sometimes your body is present, doing the required life things. But in your head, you are finding unexplored…important unexplored…tunnels. Why, exactly, is the Gulf of Maine warming faster than almost every other body of water on the planet? Do lobsters have lips? Scampering wildly from question to question, you run headfirst into someone who lives the life you’ve given your character: an actual lobsterman. Retreat!

You cold call unintimidating pseudo-experts, like captains who take tourists out for an “authentic lobster cruise”. You elbow aside a honeymooning couple from Colorado and a seventh grader with an essay due. You screen out your spouse’s murmured apologies.

“Research,” he says, by way of explanation, perhaps hoping to convince others you’re a scientist.

You ace the quiz on how to sex a lobster (it’s all about the swimmerets). Your hand is first in the air when your guide captain for volunteers to hold a lobster. When he asks, “Who wants to kiss a lobster?” you don’t hesitate. You pucker up. Dozens of cameras click. You wonder about kissing another “man” in front of your husband but decide it doesn’t matter. You didn’t kiss the lobster on its lips (too close to those claws!) and, besides, it’s research.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve done as part of researching your book?


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I am still laughing about “I don’t believe your main character knows anything about farming.” That’s SO perfect.

So yeah, what’s the strangest thing you’ve done as research–or, how about this, what’s a cool thing you learned when you were looking for something else?

OR–tell us the first thing in your search history right now. Mine is: "Do chipmunks eat rat poison?” SO important!

AND: Whoa. Look at Kate's book cover below. Isn't it gorgeous?



About the Author

Kate Woodworth is the author of Little Great Island, a novel about the power of love and community in the face of climate change on a small Maine island, and of the monthly Substack, Food in the Time of Climate Change…which gives her plenty of reasons to wander the research rabbit hole. For more, visit katewoodworth.com.

About Little Great Island

On Little Great Island, climate change is disrupting both life and love

After offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up—a place she swore she’d never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island’s summer residents, now back himself to sell his family’s summer home. Mari and Harry’s lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the shifts in climate affecting the whole ecosystem of the island…from generations of fishing families to the lobsters and the butterflies.

Little Great Island Illustrates in microcosm the greatest changes of our time and the unyielding power of love.

Buy the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/little-great-island-kate-woodworth/21515752?ean=9781960573902&next=t