The Incredible Expanding Novel Project

I've decided to write a novel. 

I know, everyone says that.  But I really mean it, and I am not implying it will be brilliant.  It will be brilliant, but I'm not IMPLYING that, because that would be arrogant, and I'm not established as an author yet.  You have to be an established author before arrogance can hold a certain cachet.

I've actually made notes for a novel, started sketching out characters and conflicts and plots.  More on that in some other entry.  Or maybe, depending on how the writing goes, I won't say anything about the specifics until I publish it.  Either way, that's not the purpose of this blog. 

I'm writing today about the surprising process of research.  I don't think I've ever felt the need for sustained research such as I feel with this project.

Here is a list of my searches from today:

• Physics in the 1940s
• Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
• Quantum Mechanics
• Schrodinger's Cat
• A History of Chicago Manufacturing
• Chicago's Central Manufacturing District
• Chicago and the Railroad
• Women's Education in the 1930s and 1940s
• The Korean War
• Prohibition
• The Spanish Civil War
• World War II Armaments And Timing Mechanisms
• Contractions in the Public Vernacular
• The History Of The Atomic Bomb

All this research produced the first three pages of a first draft of the first chapter of a novel.

No wonder novelists always look haggard and careworn.