A mystery writer's tip to getting it "write"

November is National Novel Writing Month! To help you along the way, CBC Books has compiled tips and tricks from writers from across Canada.

This tip is from Eric Wright.

"In my dotage I find I can only repeat what my first novel taught me: Do your research last. Don't waste your time, like a graduate student researching the cost of a seventeenth century haircut as necessary background to his thesis on Milton. How do you know what research you'll need until you see what you've said?

I've known people to spend months doing the research and then found they couldn't write the novel. This is fiction you're writing. Make it up, and if it turns into a story, then 'research' the necessary facts.

Write it, then Google it."

Eric Wright is credited with helping to establish Canadian crime writing as a tour de force in the 1980s. The author of four mystery series, an autobiography and a comic novel, he is best known for his Charlie Salter mysteries. Four of his novels were awarded the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. He died in 2015.