Research and the Summer of Freaking Out My Family

When I first sat down to write Liz's story, for a little while I didn't have too much trouble when it came to knowing the general structure and behavior of cults.  I had read novels centered around cults before, and from that had developed a marginal, general interest in them.  So while that marginal, general interest was developing, I would sometimes stumble upon an article about a cult, or some factoid, or a Wikipedia article, and all of that marginal, general knowledge just kind of got stored in the back of my mind and is what fed the first few chapters of the first draft.

I then hit a point in the first draft where, even though I'd actually outlined pretty much the entire story (which I needed to do, because of needing two timelines), I couldn't move myself forward.  I struggled with the wall I had hit for a good few months, but for a long time I couldn't figure out what was causing my writers block.  I had the outline in front of me--I knew exactly where Liz was, where Liz needed to go, how Liz needed to get there, and what was going to happen to her in the end.  There was absolutely no excuse for me to be so stuck.

Magazine articles and photocopies that made up a bulk of my marginal, general knowledge.