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 are in a morgue for instance, you don't know what your unconscious is picking up. You know what you're perceiving and you know what you think you're learning, but the unconscious is picking up scents, and just the look of a place, and the feel of a place, and later that's what makes that same 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 Teresa 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. 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 Ratchet. You go and meet a real nurse and see what her attitude is. What does she have on. They don't where white anymore, some of them. They don't wear the little caps, the 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, and get the information on your own.