Getting Back on Track

After two messy weeks of some nasty family emergency type issues, and one minor breakdown, I've regripped my research and I'm about to start writing. This is terrifying because I don't know how to begin and I'm always at a bit of a loss as to how to ground my writing with a foundation of history and terminology. I think this is mostly out of my old fear of using 'general knowledge' without a specific source text. It's times like this that I miss legitimate encyclopaedias.