Here’s a quick wisdom to those who love playing the “Trivial Pursuit” or indulging in “mindless” acquisition of information:
You don’t have to be like God and know everything in the world!
First, you can never be one. Second, you can never know everything. Third, don’t be sad because you still have hope.
When something in your car goes wrong, what do you do? Some call their husbands. Some call a mechanic. Some try to find the manual to see if they can fix it themselves.
As a writer, it pays to know a lot. But how do you deal with the overload of information everyday? Your brain can only read and memorize as much as it can before it breaks down. (Or tilt up!). If you get paid to teach people what you know, you have to make sure that brain doesn’t splatter from the pressure to learn everything.
The key is to know “where” the information can be found when you need it. Accessibility and Organization are a writer’s indispensable tools. Try pitching in a quote from a famous person only to find out you forgot half of the quote and who said it. If you have a reference book, you can just simply look it up. The Internet has made life easier for the writer who can simply “google” it too.
Now, if only I can remember where that reference book was…
