The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Writer’s Life

  • Why I Write

    Because I’m paid for it. In a career that has spanned multiple mighty professions, writing has always turned out to be my most salable skill.

    I work in a space that librarians and search algorithm authors call the Long Tail of Information. Think of it this way— a little bit of information is important to vast quantities of people. How to eat properly. The date of the next general election. The price of tickets to The Dark Knight Rises. After that the graph tapers off pretty sharply. The vast majority of information out there has a very small, but very enthusiastic, audience.

    When I write a report, I’m pulling together data from various sources, online and offline, and repackaging it into a product that is of vital personal importance to anywhere from, say, five to thirty-five people. It may be of casual interest to a couple of dozen or a couple of hundred more. And it will have absolutely no impact on the lives of the other seven and a half billion people on the planet.

    None of this means that this information isn’t valuable! People will use it to make important decisions. Somebody could end up spending a million dollars. Somebody else might or might not get sick. The collective IQ of the planet will increase by an infinitesimal amount. Work will get done. People will get paid.

    And I’m one of them.

  • Writing: It’s Just This Thing, You Know?

    Ha. Um… Oh dear.

    Why do I write?

    It took a while, but I remember why I started writing: I wanted to tell the story better. I was reading something (Star Wars novels. Babysitter’s Club and Trixie Belden books. Fanfiction on a dial-up connection in 1998.) and I would think, “Hey, that’s cool and all, but…”

    In the beginning, it was just about having an idea and wanting to tell you all about it.

    It’s not a bad beginning, but it doesn’t sum up why I keep doing it. I’m afraid the overall answer isn’t really awesome or deep. It’s just — I do. I imagine that being a writer is something so built into me that I can’t really be anything else. I’m not really good at anything else.

    (more…)

  • A System of Belief

    http://www.crafty-games.com/forum/index.php?topic=342.0
    I played with these as a child. Likely the inspiration for my belief in The Line. Pulled from here.

    I believe in The Line.

    When humans first demarcated space they started telling stories. “Yours,” pointing to one side of a Line drawn in the dirt with a finger or a stick; “Mine,” pointing to the other side.

    Humans have evolved the line as they themselves have evolved, using it to define shapes of animals or other people in the service of telling a story. This culminated in the storytelling of cave paintings that started as early as 40,000 years ago.

    As far as my limited research has gone on the subject of cave paintings it’s obvious that scholars don’t know what purpose the paintings served. Whether for religious purposes or to brag or communicate that hunting in the area was good is a mystery. For all anyone knows, it may be the earliest form of “Kilroy was here”-type graffiti. Regardless, the paintings are a form of storytelling. Pictograms go back at least as far as cave paintings and culminate in Sumerian and Egyptian cultures, becoming more than just ancient versions of Powerpoint presentations, but actual language. (more…)

  • The Effective Intertext

    In teacher training classes, once we had to make a visual map of “A Day in the Literate Life.” The instructor intended us to examine all the literary tasks we performed each day, the better to understand the types of reading and writing we (and our students in the future) must be able to process. And I realized that I floated from one type of writing to another type of reading back to writing, constantly, throughout every day. My writing life is a natural extension of my reading life.

    On days when I feel pretentious and long for grad school, I might say that my inner voice constitutes a rich intertext, that I am the intersection between the many texts of my reading life, and in writing I bring all those input sources together. I honor the writing that has fed me by writing back at it.

    Or I might just say that I feel lucky to have read a lot of great books and want to express that gratitude back with some books of my own.

    Also, I have always been a hand raiser, one to talk in class–not because I wanted to show off, but because my larynx would burst if I did not get to talk within the next three minutes. And writing allows me to sound that barbaric yawp in quieter, better controlled ways. I write because I talk, because I am grateful, and because I want to participate in the conversations that have shaped my life and mind.

     

  • {Insert Clever Title Here}

    Wasn’t sure how to approach this week’s assignment, so I went for simple: here’s a brief history of my writing experience.

    Years ago during a drive back home from graduate school with my then girlfriend (and now wife) to visit my parents, I took some NoDoz. I’d never taken any kind of anti-drowsy medication before, and I was skeptical that it would work. I was known to chug Mountain Dew right before going to bed, with no ill effects. How could two little caffeine pills matter?

    About an hour into the drive, my eventual spouse turned to me and asked, “How are you doing?”

    “I’mdoinggreat!ButIhaveawholelotofthingsIwanttotalktoyouabout!”

    Yes, it was that frantic and fast. No, I’ve never taken NoDoz since that day. What did I need to talk about so frantically? My first idea for my own science fiction story. The best idea ever for a story.

    Yes, really.

    (more…)

  • Take My Hand — We’re Going Elsewhere

    A Young Girl Reading by Jean-Honore Fragonard c.1776

    It would be easy for me to tell you that I write because I have to — that it’s in my blood and my heart, and I can’t help myself. That wouldn’t be true, exactly. I make up stories because I don’t know how not to. When I was a little girl, I told myself stories to fall asleep, and today I make up outrageous scenarios for people I see walking their dogs or sitting across a crowded restaurant.

    But I don’t write those down. Making stuff up is not writing.

    I would love to tell you I write for the money, but it’s too soon for that. Ask me again in a few years. Still, even if I were rich, it wouldn’t be why I started writing. Anybody who starts writing because they think it’s a good way to get rich quick is facing a huge letdown. That’s not it either.

    I write because I read. (more…)

  • I Write So My Head Doesn’t Explode

    The simple answer is that I write because I have to. I have too many thoughts in my head, so I have to frequently siphon them off by writing. If I didn’t, my head would fill to the bursting point, and probably explode.

    I write because I have this compulsion to remember everything. My memory has lots of holes, so if I don’t write something down, I forget it.

    I write because there are so many stories inside of me: characters and worlds and great adventures I want to explore.

    (more…)

  • I Have Seen Wonders Untold

    Comet Hale-Bopp
    Comet Hale-Bopp as it appeared over Boulder, Colorado in 1997. Image borrowed from here.

    When I was about six or seven years old, I was obsessed with space. I wanted to be an astronaut and travel out of the Earth’s atmosphere to go to the Moon, to Mars, to Jupiter, or beyond. I wanted to go “out there,” where no one else had been. Because it would mean seeing wonders untold.

    But for a boy born with brittle bones, the reality of traveling on a rocket would mean being crushed by G-forces my body couldn’t bear. Becoming an astronaut would never be in the cards for me.

    I could never go to space. I would never see a Martian sunset or watch as Jupiter filled the sky from Titan. I would never travel to the stars.

    (more…)

  • We Are Finite; Sometimes Words Are Not

    I’ve thought a lot about this: why we write. Lord knows, there are easier ways to spend your day.

    One of the dirty truths about writing is that it’s a hell of a lot of work. No matter what offerings I make (and there have been many), the words refuse to write themselves. They are selfish and lazy little bastards.

    To be entirely honest, there are plenty of times I want to walk away and do almost anything other than write, but for some reason, I don’t. And a lot of my writer friends don’t either. Time after time, we find ourselves drawn back to the desk or the laptop or the pen and paper so we can hash out the things that are banging around inside our head.

    Now you might be saying to yourself, “Wow, Larry. That sounds like a stubborn group of people who really have a thing for emotional agony.” I wouldn’t disagree with you. But I also admit that I proudly count myself among their numbers, and I think the answer to why we keep at this writing thing goes deeper than our being a collection of people whose particular kink is self-induced frustration.

    (more…)

  • Sharks Have to Swim; Writers Have to Write

    From Wikipedia

    During elementary school, I drew comic books in class. My first character was Outback Jack, a whip-toting bad-ass inspired by Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones. By the time I reached high school, I spent a lot of time writing and drawing comics. I came up with the brand name Power Comics when I was in sixth grade, and made business cards on printer paper. I even had a logo.

    With the exception of Outback Jack and a couple of other characters, I didn’t have interest in continuing their adventures. I loved coming up with characters and writing their origin stories. I’ve always loved a good comic book origin story, even to this day. All told, I invented around fifty title characters. Many of them shared powers with published super heroes, but that has never stopped DC or Marvel from ripping each other off.

    Looking, back, that is how I began writing. I felt a rush and kept seeking it. I used to think I started writing in college. I wrote a scene for video production my sophomore year and attended a screenwriter’s boot camp as a junior. But when I really look at my life, writing has always been there. (more…)