neilexysts replied to your post “A question for my fellow writers… Do you find yourself wasting...”
I spent 5-6hrs (in total, not in one go) looking at different sites to see how intercalation in the Chinese calendar works and figuring out how to calculate it. Upside: I now know how it works, how to use ephemeris, and found a site that does the math for me. Downside: it's never going to be mentioned in my fic, ever!
Well... it’s always good to learn new things. And you learned something truly unique (I’m going to have to google all these things)! Plus, you never know when you may need to drop some knowledge during a pub quiz or something like that.
But it is annoying when you’ve spent so much time researching only to realize, there really isn’t a place for it to fit. There have been plenty of times I’ve had to edit out something that I spent hours researching because it just drags down the pace of the story and it’s unnecessary. It’s heartbreaking, but must be done.