When you are planning to begin writing your own book, whether to start writing right away or dedicate more time to initial research depends strongly on how familiar you are with the topic you are writing about, how many ideas you have gathered at this point, whether you know precisely what turns your plot will take at the beginning of your book, or if you have only a general idea but require much outside information to flesh out the body of your work. Not many authors, even the more experienced ones, can just fall right into a story without having researched some of the ideas, information, characters, events, beliefs, or cultures even, that they would like to include in their novel or other form of writing. If you have a good idea on what points you would like to include in your story, make a general outline, or even go as far as writing out some chapters within the book, if the ideas just come to you, but then also go back and research, research, research, in order to maintain a certain level of consistency and resourcefulness (especially when including preexisting ideas or beliefs).

I guess it would depend on as to what kind of book you are writing. Depending on the subject of the material, it may be ok to begin writing the material before having to do any research while other books, would require doing the research first. For example, if your book was on factual information, you would probably want to do the research first before writing because being accurate would be more important than writing first.

If the book in question is something along the lines of a children’s story, then you could probably begin the writing first because doing the research first would not be as important in this scenario. So as one of the other respondents mentioned in their reply, whether research is done first or not would more than likely depend on the kind of book you were writing.

It depends on the kind of book you are writing. If you are writing fiction, you can just start writing and research as you go. If you are writing a historical novel, obviously you would need to do some research at the beginning, so that you know what you are talking about as you write. If you are writing non-fiction, it would be advisable to start research before the project, so you have a background to start from. I have written both fiction and non-fiction and I work as a researcher for a private investigation company. I can tell you that no matter how much research I do beforehand, as you are writing; new questions will always come up, requiring further research. Do not just count on the Internet for research; visit your local public library. Librarians are more than willing to help you with your research project.