Sue Grafton, On Conducting Research for Her Novels

00:08 [Sue Grafton] I think the creative process is always at work. Sometimes in ways we don't even know. One of the reasons I do all my own research instead of farming it out is that if you were in a morgue for instance, you don't know what your unconscious is picking up. You know what you're perceiving, you know what you think you're learning. But the unconscious

00:30 is picking up scents, and just the look of a place and the feel of a place. And later, that's what makes that scene work in a piece of fiction. I do think of myself as a journalist. Why would I invent a police station when I can go down to the Santa Theresa Police Department, and see how they're doing business? I think the mistake many writers make is that they think you make it up. You don't. You report it.

01:00 You go out in the world and you find out what doctors do. You don't sit there regurgitating old TV shows. You know, Dr. So-and-So and Nurse Ratched, you go and meet a real nurse and see what her attitude is. What does she have on? They don't wear white anymore, some of ‘em. They don't wear the little caps with little buttons. But if you haven't been out in the hospital, you're there reproducing all the old bad TV shows you've ever seen. So, better to go and look. Go and do, get the information on your own.