“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” (Sagan)

When you're a writer, everything that you do becomes research. You need to push the limits of your experiences in life beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone. If it's uncomfortable, do it. Feel every moment. See every detail. Whiff every scent. Every tiny molecule is observed, explored, cultivated into something that you can translate into the art of language.

Words don't seem to be enough to captivate that tiny thrill that you get when you see something perfect or feel something beautiful. But they'll have to do.

Everything that I do is research. Standing outside in the spring rain, cold drops plop plop plop onto your scalp, tracing your hair and down the back of your neck, traveling beneath the cotton clothes now gripping to your skin as the hair raises and your nipples harden. Everything sinful, sweet, painful and beauteous etches into your mind. You catalog it as something potentially useful and meaningful for a later date. You may not need to write about how sweaty your hands get when you grip the steering wheel of your car as you barrel through town during a tornado-warned storm right now. Someday, though, it may come in real handy.

Anytime someone asks you, the writer/director, why you're volunteering to be a nude model for an art class or why you're laying in a tub filled with tarantulas or why you're touring a morgue, there's only one legitimate (and halfway sane) answer: research.