From research to writing fiction

People often find it peculiar that I turned to writing fiction after a happy career in market research. They seem so different, but not to me. 

  

To most people, research seems a dry, fact-filled occupation, filled with graphs and awful surveys about what foods you eat, what films you see, what car you drive or you'd like to drive, even what jeans you wear.  Some find it comical to picture an army of researchers analyzing such trivial choices. But to others, the act of categorizing people seems ludicrous or invasive or both. 

But any researcher can tell you:  there is no such thing as a meaningless choice.  Our lives are soaked in everyday-ness, and the reasons we offer for our choices are mostly lies we tell ourselves – fictions, if you will. We want to feel that we are idiosyncratic, individual, impossible to predict—that each of our preferences reflects some inner, hidden point of light.

No one wants to be that person – you know, the person the polls predict.

Truth is, I can predict – yes, that word, predict – many choices from learning rather a few (very few, if I think about it) variables: age and gender, where you live, educational level, and a startlingly few media choices. If you live in San Francisco, and are white, male, and read, oh, The New York Times or The New Yorker, chances are you label yourself as a "passionate" environmentalist, you adore the films of the Coen Brothers, you eschew TV sitcoms, and on it goes.  (I don't even have to say voting choices, do I?)

The fun is asking the impolite follow-up questions, what I call the question behind the answer.  Say, you tell me you drive a Subaru.  You give your laundry list of reasons—but a little digging, I'm bound to get a different sort of answer, about your identity, about your values, which seems to have nothing to do with cars, and yet has everything to do with cars. A Subaru driver isn't going to drive a Cadillac—that goes without saying.

So what car does my heroine drive?  What does she read? I need to know, or else she'll remain lifeless. She needs everydayness to spring to life –I need to see her apartment, her outfits, her neighborhood. The outside leads to the inside—it can't stop there, it's a starting point, as every good market researcher knows.