Writing: The Profession Most Likely to Accidentally Land You on a Terrorist Watch List?

Good writing is good because the conflicts are strong and the plots are intriguing.  Of course, this means it often has to include stuff that’s not part of the writer’s every day life.  And so to learn more about these exciting, obscure, dangerous things, we writers do what every lazy, red-blooded American would, we Google.  And this, of course, leads to an interesting cache of searches.  For me, these have included:

• The names of the clothing the Taliban required male citizens to wear after taking over Afghanistan
• Algerian methods of torture
• How to do a kidney transplant
• Photos of Jack the Ripper’s victims
• How to launder money
• Soviet Era weaponry

From talking to other writers, I know I am not alone in my clandestine searches… if I’m not on some sort of government watch list, the Patriot Act is failing us.