How much time should you spend on research?
No matter how many books you have,
the right one isn’t on your shelf
when you need a fact to support your story.
I have the Time-Life The Old West series on my shelf. (The brown ones in the bottom left of the photo.) There are 26 of them filled with stories that intrigue me but don’t have anything to do with what I’m currently writing, except for this one.
This volume is The Miners and it’s filled with rabbit trails. I’m researching for a story set in Colorado in 1860 except it wasn’t called Colorado then, it was Idaho, or Colorado Territory or Jefferson Territory. (Rabbit trail alert! Idaho was called Montana for for a while.) Because of the rumblings of the Civil War, the state and territory naming was halted until 1863. So that leaves me with making a writer’s decision. Do I go with what the reader would be comfortable with or the historian?
Help me decide by leaving a comment, please.
And if you’re wondering those aren’t matches under the book. That’s a copy of Rob Eagar’s Sell Your Book like Wildfire. Why is it there? Because it’s another rabbit trail I need to follow. 
*ROW80 Check in 2000 words written on proposal
met my blogging goal
met the workout and food tracking goal for the week AND–cleaned my house!