Ah, research is a wonderful thing. Until it becomes all-consuming.
I've often expressed my admiration for Wikipedia, and the easy access it provides to the sum of human knowledge (with a little idle conjecture and pure falsehood mixed in for color). Think of a subject, learn all about it in five minutes' time on Wikipedia. I can even make the case that time spent reading Wiki-articles is time well spent, giving me more material from which to draw as an author.
I'm now suffering from an overabundance of material, and a dearth of authoring.
Latest trap: reading about
Adolf Hitler. Interesting stuff, full of ideas for alternate history fiction (all of which have
probably been done before), but an interminably long article. All the hyperlinks to other World War II terms with which I'm unfamiliar help none at all in my attempts to extract myself and go get some real writing done. Wonderful input...but while I'm taking in input, I'm producing no output.
I've literally been reading the Hitler article for three days. (No, not straight through; I'm not that slow. I read a bit, then make myself go do something else, then come back to it, follow a hyperlink-rabbit chase, come back once again, and so on.) I'll probably be reading it for a couple days more.
Then I'll work hard to avoid wondering about any other topics I could dial up on Wikipedia and get on with trying to be an author...