I consider myself to be an artist, like Steven Spielberg.
But in my nonfiction, which by now is most of my work, I also consider myself to be an intellectual.
Everything I do in nonfiction I intend to be factually correct, as well as accurate to the spirit of real life.
And so an intellectual might ask, why don't you use primary sources in your histories?
Why don't you use scholarly papers?
Because I am a civilian.
I am not employed as an intellectual.
And so on the Internet, where is where I do much of my research (because I don't have enough money to bey that many books, and you can't always find a book that covers something anyway), I don't have access to scholarly papers.
Back when I did my history of the age before the Dinosaurs, way back very early in my writing career before I came to focus primarily on preindustrial human history, I had access to some scholarly papers as a civilian.
I no longer do.
I have no idea what the official process is.
If you have to pay for them, well, I am paying for as many sources as I can.
I don't think you can buy individual scholarly papers anyway.
But I don't have access to scholarly papers as a civilian.
And so I rely on secondary sources like Will Durant's Story of Civilization.
Anyway, I just thought you might want to know!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. I do consider myself to be an intellectual as well as an artist, but the intellectual world is not my primary audience. My primary audience is you! Whoever shows up and wants to hear the story! God loves you!