My number one hobby is writing. The rest are really all just to inform my writing, if I’m frank.
I have commitment issues when it comes to other hobbies. I pick up a bunch of hobbies long enough to learn about them but never master them, then move on to the next thing. I love to learn about everything, but I’m never dedicated enough to become an expert in anything.
This does help me as a writer, believe it or not. I can include these hobbies in my story with just enough detail to be convincing, but be able to get away with not being proficient. Usually I use writing as an excuse to learn different hobbies more than I use my hobbies to inform my writing.
Writers are often encouraged to “experience” life in an effort to make their work more compelling. Well, experience doesn’t always mean living through a tragedy or performing some heart-stopping thrill. Some experiences are more … sedate.
Overland Park, Kansas, City Hall
When I was in high school — back before the Internet Age — my English teacher tasked the class to encounter a new experience and write about it. He provided a long list of suggestions and said he would be willing to entertain other ideas.
Now, my life up to that point had been pretty sheltered. I hadn’t traveled much. I had yet to land my first job. And my idea of a big weekend was going to the mall on Friday night and hanging out at the arcade. In short, my life was pretty devoid of new experiences.
I had planned to spice it up by asking my parents to let me attend a wrestling match in Kansas City. I figured the visceral experience in the ring would be equally matched by the rabid fans in the cheap seats. I wanted to be a part of something truly outside my comfort zone.
I don’t have a lot of hobbies any more. I think as you get older and life gets busier, it becomes difficult to make time for the things you aren’t required to do. Maybe that’s a bad thing. Most likely it is. But it’s a fact of life, and from what I understand, I’m not in this boat alone.
That being said, not always having time for your hobbies doesn’t mean you let your curiosity go to waste. If there’s a subject that piques your interest even a little, you need to get yourself online or to the library or buried in a reference book, whatever it takes to scratch that intellectual itch.
It’s easy as a writer to categorize these fishing expeditions as going in search of story ideas, but I think that’s selling the process short. What you’re really doing is satisfying a need to know. You’re curious, so you’ve gone exploring. Even if it’s just along some nameless digital highway, you’re covering ground that’s new to you, and that’s never a bad thing.
In your search for knowledge, you may or may not find the answers you’re looking for, but in my experience, you always come away with more questions. And more areas that need investigation.
“People are inclined to say I am Ramona. I’m not sure that’s true, but I did share some experiences with her.” – Beverly Cleary
If you are a writer, you have heard the saying, “Write what you know.” With all due respect, that is hogwash. What if you don’t know about something? Does that mean you can’t write about it? That seems unnecessarily limiting for a craft that is about constant evolution and experimentation.
I have always preferred John Gardner’s concept. Write in the style that you love. If you love science fiction, write it. If you love fantasy, write it. If you, like me, love a variety of styles, you will find yourself writing in many different ways.
I refuse to be confined by what I know. Instead, I liberate myself with learning. It isn’t difficult to pick up enough about any subject matter to give your writing a sense of authority. You don’t need to be able to write a dissertation on molecular physics to have a physicist appear in your story.
I am an artist, not a scientist. It’s a waste of time to become an expert in pointless things when I could be practicing my craft, which is writing. All I need is enough spice to make the story taste real.
The old adage for writers states that we should write what we know. But how many of us actually put that to use? This week, the Confabulator Cafe is asking its writers to talk about experience and how it informs or influences their writing.
Some writers live for new experiences. Others write what we can’t experience. Whether they are writing about their day jobs or slipping tidbits about their favorite hobbies into the mix, most writers have no shortage of experience to draw from.
We hope you enjoy this week’s posts. Leave us some comments, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Ever wonder what a writer’s workspace looks like? That place where all of that creation happens? Where we concoct plots and meddle with character’s lives, the space where we spend hours of our time as our stories unfold? This week we asked the Confabulators to reveal their writing space to our readers. Below you will discover where the magic takes place. If you are brave enough to learn.
This is “The Dungeon.” No windows, no television, no radio. Cold concrete floors, a few hundred books, a small desk, and my NEO or laptop. The whiteboard tracks whatever I currently have submitted. Otherwise, I write a lot of places. I am pretty portable.
My writing space is wherever I make it. Sometimes it’s at my desk at work, while I eat my lunch. Or it may be in my home office, when my desk is clean enough to actually use. But most of the time, my writing space is a corner of the couch with my laptop on my lap.
I have an office upstairs. I never really used it, and now my daughter is living in it. In preparation of having both kids back home, I’ve carved out a small space for myself in the bedroom — just a table and a kitchen chair, but they face a window. Really that’s all I need, as long as my laptop goes with me. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve been working from the couch for months now. A more formal space will probably do me good.
Pretty much wherever I land is my writing space. I’m retooling my home office so I can use it more effectively, but as long as I have a computer and some flat area like a table or my lap, my writing space is wherever I am. That said, the space that really matters is in my head and that requires being able to tap into writer energy we all need to tell stories.
Miklos had been dreaming of bacon for a solid week before he decided, by God, to do something about it.
Almost anything could be gotten at Capricorn Station. It was a transport and commerce hub for twelve star systems. Species, races, and cultures of all kinds passed through, for diplomatic or economic exchange, or on their way to somewhere else. Capricorn’s warehouses were stocked with goods from hundreds of planets and outposts, any of which a being could buy, within reason.
Unfortunately those reasons did not extend to cured, smoked, animal-based lipids in a protein matrix imported, at great expense, from Earth.
“I’ll have to make my own,” Miklos confided to the only customer in the bar, a shifty-eyed jack-of-all-trades who claimed his name was Anson.
I work in dreams. Daydreams, nightmares, wet dreams, if you can dream it, chances are I—or one of my coworkers—had a hand in it. The longer your fantasy, the longer I’m pulled away from whatever it is I’m working on. The pay is great. It has to be. You can’t hold down another job when working this one, well, maybe if you’re a writer, but even then some months there’s barely enough time to sleep, let alone work freelance.
I can’t help when I’m called away. I don’t have business hours. I can sometimes squeeze in a day off—usually on a Friday or Saturday night when the world is too inebriated to miss dreams. If I’m needed, I’m yanked away from whatever I’m doing without so much as a by-your-leave. A minute’s notice would be nice—just enough time to pull my pants up or turn off the stove. I’d rather throw out a half-congealed mess that went cold than have to move for the eighth time because my kitchen caught on fire or the apartment flooded. (more…)
I get out of the limousine at the hotel’s side door. This is a private affair, very exclusive one of a kind evening. Of everyone invited, I’m the least – the very least – of any of them. I don’t have any kind of standing and yet they asked me to be here. I’m still not sure why but maybe I’ll be enlightened during the appetizer course.
It’s not a service entrance I’m shown to, it’s the private entrance, the one the punters never get to see. There are two goons on the door and the concierge meets me with a slight smile of recognition. “Good evening, sir,” he says, “if you’ll follow me?” I nod and walk past the goons. I stick my finger in my collar and loosen it a bit.
The elevator ride up is quick, the car itself opulent, like something out of a dream that Winsor McCay constructed from Scheherezade’s notes for tales not told. I’m let out on the penthouse floor and follow the concierge to the right. He leads me through a double door, across a foyer that has a single painting in it but I don’t have time to properly take it in. It appears to be a Maxfield Parrish, but it’s a fleeting impression. M’sieu Concierge is holding open another door, waiting for me to enter The Room.
“Let’s not be too rough on our own ignorance,” someone was saying as I entered, “it’s what makes America great!”
I couldn’t believe who it was. Moreover, I couldn’t believe who he was talking to.
She pointed at me and he turned to look. Both of them welcomed me.
“Frank,” I said. “I mean, Mr. Zappa.” I shake his hand and he sips from his cocktail. I’m bewildered and it shows. I’m stunned to be in the same room with Frank Zappa and Mata Hari. “Miss Margreet.” She holds out her hand and I bow over it unsure whether to press my lips to her delicate fingers or not. I do and she smiles at me when our eyes meet. “A pleasure,” I say, “to meet you.”
She hooks her arm in mine and Frank leads us to the table. The two men sitting there are not who I expected, even with Frank and Margreet flanking me.
“Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.” Papa Hemingway was sitting on one corner of the table with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a cigar in another.
“Being privileged to work hard for long hours at something you think is worth doing is the best kind of play,” Robert Heinlein said. He smiled and sipped his drink. It appeared that he and Hemingway were getting along famously.
I accepted a drink from Mata Hari (she preferred to be called Margreet) and sat next to her and across from Heinlein. Zappa sat next to him and of course Hemingway sat at the head of the table. Margreet leaned in close and said, “He’s used to life in the fast lane, travels all over the world, already risks his life racing at over 300km/h and seems to be handy with a gun.”
“I see that,” I say and that’s all I say when a door opens and a parade of waiters came through all carrying plates filled with food. They took positions on Heinlein’s side and the platters floated over our heads and landed on the table.
“Tapas for appetizers,” a voice said from the door. He looked familiar, the chef: wavy brown hair, a goatee and an impish smile. He nodded at me and he waved his hands and smaller plates whirled in a circle overhead while an army of wine bottles marched from the far end of the table. Hemingway’s smile was as big as the ocean and Zappa looked bored. The chef twisted his hands at the wrists and the wines were poured, a red and white for each of us.
Hemingway tore into the tapas with gusto and Heinlein reached over for the plate near Margreet. She demurred and the meal was on. There wasn’t a lot of talking as the soup course came next, then a light salad. It was when we were about half way through the fish when I finally asked the question.
“Why am I here?”
Heinlein glared at me. Heminway snorted. Zappa leaned forward and said, “There’s no reason to assume that my idea of what‘s better would really be better.”
Hemingway drained his red wine, picked up his whiskey. “That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.”
The old man, Heinlein, was stoic and staring me down. He was daring me to ask the question again. I didn’t. Finally, he said: “You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.”
The chef came back in with the waiters, bearing dessert. It was a cake of some kind that was on fire. Margreet clapped her hands. I looked at her, expecting a response. She sighed at last and said, “I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.”
They’d all said something, I’d spent the entire evening with them, all influential people in their times, and had no idea why they’d assembled for me. The chef walked around the table while the others all stared at me.
“You’re here,” he said, “because
A final note: Each of the quotes ascribed to the real people in the story is something they said while alive. Hemingway, Heinlein, and Zappa’s came from Wikiquotes and Margreet/Mata Hari’s come from her page at thinkexist.com. Finally, the story is printed accurately above. It ends just like that, like a lot of dreams do, in the middle of a sentence. Thanks for reading!
“The world didn’t end in fire, didn’t end in ice,” grumbled Chef Wallace. “Either of those, I could have used to cook. But no, we are stuck in this awful entropy, this perpetual 80 to 100 degree wilting vegetable hell.”
Darwin and Gwynn exchanged eye rolls. The assistant cooks knew they were about to hear another lecture on “back when I was in school, it was all freeze this, set fire to that” extravagance. Wallace shook with rage, and the assistant chefs backed up. In this era of limited food, it was remarkable how the carbohydrates of yesteryear still padded his mighty flesh.”Back then, if our Humble Cooperative Leader would have asked for ice cream, I would have gone to the liquid nitrogen stock, and voila, deluxe ice cream, immediately. But what am I supposed to do for his birthday now? Ten years I have not had a refrigerator, let alone a freezer, let alone a proper ice cream maker.”
