Research Hints for Writers: Memoir, Historical Fiction

I gave a presentation a few days ago entitled ‘research hints for writers’ that includes many resources for those who want to do research to aid their writing projects. It was a lot of fun! I thought I’d post it here in the hope that it might be useful to others. While the presentation discusses resources from local entities such as the Los Angeles County Library system, understand that the books and databases available there are the same or very similar to those available at public libraries everywhere. Using any of them will make you familiar with a great number of them, particularly those from major providers such as ProQuest and Gale Research.

The resources and approaches I discussed include:

• Stay open to following strange paths.
• Don’t forget books–many were written precisely for your task.
• Decide on the depth of research.
  • Do you need academic resources?
  • Do you need to travel?
• Interview others.
• Use valuable free online resources.
• Use your public library.
  • Be familiar with databases that are available to you free.

The presentation has many links to valuable resources such as Harvard Sociology’s interview hints, various collections at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, books written specifically for writers who want to include historically accurate details in their writing, books dedicated to the local histories of many communities all over the United States, and common databases and newspaper indexes available free at public libraries.

Since I’m here, I want to mention that if you are writing memoir in the form of essays, we at Inlandia Literary Journal would enjoy the chance to read your work. We’re nice, and we post about your work on social media. 🙂 Currently, we are working on our teen issue—teen editors are selecting the pieces that will make up our next issue in early May. But we will reopen to adults later in the summer. In the meantime, get your pieces publication ready. If you subscribe to this blog, you will receive the post (as you will all posts from this site) that announces Inlandia’s call for the fall issue.

Another place to submit short nonfiction that reflects on childhood from an adult point of view is the Longridge Review. My experience with them is that they are very nice and supportive of their authors. (Here’s my Longridge piece.) They include artwork to complement your piece. Post-publication, they tweet out news of your work. Overall, a great experience.

Happy researching with these hints and resources! Happy writing!