Research is an important, I mean, the most important part of writing non-fiction and you have to be very careful with what you choose to include. I only work or I try only to work with primary sources. That’s those very original documents, the things that were written at the time.
If I’m gonna do a biography of Abraham Lincoln, my favorite sources are those that come from the actual time — some speeches from Lincoln, things that he’s written, letters, things that friends have written about Abraham Lincoln, or enemies, which are always more interesting.
Enemies, things people wrote about Lincoln who may not have liked him. There were a lot of people that didn’t. Newspaper articles from the time. Those are the things that I look at first. If I find it in a secondary source, that means that some other author wrote and said it was true.
My rule of thumb is that I need to find it three other places before I can assume that what that particular author told me is absolutely true, which is a shame because sometimes we find really great anecdotes — a great story, and you realize that you’ve only found it once. If you can’t verify it, you can’t use it.
For me, I love it. Research really is an adventure. It’s a discovery process. I’m always digging in. I never known what great little nugget, little gem I’m gonna uncover. It can be sometimes frustrating.
I like to actually go to the library, so when I was working on Eleanor Roosevelt, I went to the FDR library in Hyde Park. When I was working on The Lincolns, I spent a lot of time at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and other small archives.
There’s the Library of Congress that has all of the Lincoln papers. They’ve digitized them now and this is a beautiful source for students and young readers, young writers because you can see the primary source. You can see that primary document right online now.
You no longer have to take another author’s word for it or read a book about it. You can actually go right to the source on the Library of Congress and read it in Lincoln’s hand. If you’re having trouble reading that faded document, you can always read the transcribed version, as well. It’s just a fabulous resource.
That said, when you use resources on the internet, you have to be very careful about which ones you’re using. It’s hard. Even I have a hard time telling the difference between what’s accurate and true and what is not.
